Designing Training and Instructional Programs for Older Adults

68 Designing training and instructional programs for older adults

4.3 Recommendations

• Provide an overview of the task domain and objectives so that the

learner can have a reference or cognitive structure as a way to orga-

nize and associate new learning materials.

• Emphasize learning by doing instead of passive learning that

requires the learner to retain excessive amounts of information in

memory prior to performing any task or exercise that requires use

of that information.

• Induce extra effort early in training by requiring performance on

some relatively more difcult exercises, but only if older learners

have already shown signs of having gained condence based on

their performance on previous more basic exercise ...