Book Review: Let Them Choose: Cafeteria Learning Style for Adults

One of the treats that I look forward to when I go to a conference is hitting the conference bookstore. I just went to the Association for Talent Development conference and naturally, went to the bookstore. During this trip, I picked up a little book that looked interesting called Let Them Choose: Cafeteria Learning Style for Adults by Jillian Douglas and Shannon McKenzie. I was very pleased with what I learned in this book.

When I say the book is little, it weighs in at 128 pages arranged in 10 different chapters. The chapters include:

• How We Learn
• What is Cafeteria Learning?
• Getting Buy-in for Cafeteria Learning
• Writing Cafeteria Learning Objectives
• Designing Cafeteria Learning Activities
• The Framework
• Facilitating Cafeteria Learning
• Measuring and Evaluating the Results
• Case Studies
• Tried-and-True Cafeteria Learning Activities

The basic premise of the book was to get away from lecture-style workshops and to engage in more hands-on student-centered activities. Let Them Choose is supported by a lot of important research on how individuals learn. They use this research to guide the conversation to more active learning.

The basic organization for cafeteria learning is to start with an overview of what will occur or the overall thread of the workshop. Participants will then use hands-on activities to help understand the objectives of the workshop. Finally, the workshop concludes with a debriefing to ensure that the objectives are met.

Activity Menu

The activity menu is arranged in such a way that participants get to pick and choose items that they wish to focus on as they relate to individual objectives. A typical one-hour session would have three objectives. Each objective would have three different activities. The participants would choose one activity for each objective. At the end of the workshop, they will have participated in one activity for each of the objectives for a total of three different activities.

The Mechanics

The authors devoted chapters to important activities that must take place for success. These activities include garnering support for the idea of cafeteria learning as well as writing objectives that would be suitable for cafeteria learning.

“Training is something that’s imposed on you; learning is something you choose.“ ~ Jay Cross, 2007

Douglas and McKenzie also devoted time showing how to design effective cafeteria learning activities as well as designing workshops that use these different activities.

At the end of the book, they provided samples of different activities that could be tailored for your own workshop.

I can’t wait to use what I learned in Let Them Choose to build my own cafeteria learning workshop for the upcoming term. As an instructional technologist, I would definitely recommend this book to other educators.

Photo: Breakfast is Ready at Miriam’s Kitchen by Geoffrey Dudgeon. Licensed under CC-BY-NC.

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