How to identify learner needs within the Level 3 Award in Education and Training (AET)

Everyone has their individual learning needs in the classroom and in the work environment and your role as a trainer is to identify these needs and come up with ways to overcome these individual needs. We address this in the Level 3 Award in Education and Training but you need to determine what needs your learners have and this may be simply obtained through an application form, interview form, assessment or simply just a feedback form. The goal is to identify potential issues and problems that will prevent learning to happen so you can manage it. We could typically call this an initial assessment however you can use any form which is relevant to you.

Level 3 Award in Education and Training workplace needs

In a workplace, we train the trainers to recognise limitations of their employees, maybe they are unable to write reports due to dyslexia, so maybe we need to provide them with a computer or we can use a colleague to type up their reports. Some employees have childcare to deal with, so for me, I need to be at home certain days of the week or after my son’s had an operation, then I need to work home for some days so can we make arrangements for staff or learners to work from home. This is the biggest advantage of elearning is the fact it is easier for most people to do so at home to cater for many of their needs.

Level 3 Award in Education and Training learning styles

Any teacher training course and in particularly the Level 3 Award in Education and Training emphasise learning styles. This is crucial even if you are an employer. The purpose is to identify a learners or member of staff learning style to help them to learn the topic or to learn the job to the relevant standard. If you don’t provide training to the learners preferred style, there is a good chance that the learner isn’t going to be able to perform the skill. Quite often tasks at work are shown and its expected for the employee to just get it. But what if this person learns by reading procedures? Its important that any training meets the needs of visual learners, auditory learners, reading and writing preference learners and kinaesthetic learners. The best training methods accommodate all learning preferences as it not only cements learning by using more styles but it will meet the needs of a variety of different learners. If you go to Ikea like me and definitely for the meatballs and you need to go through the pain of building flat packed furniture, you will either read the instructions, do it yourself without reading or check for YouTube videos, these are learning styles. But just remember, learning styles change over time and they will vary from task to task and most individuals have a preference for one or more learning styles too so its not a case of one size fits all.

Let’s go back to learner needs, just because I prefer to a classroom course as it engages my kinaesthetic needs, it may not necessarily satisfy financial needs, or childcare needs to you really have to factor in all different scenarios. Our Level 3 Award in Education and Training teaches you how to adapt to different needs.