Learning Services

As we have stepped into this new world of learning which we call Learning 2.0,  I thought it will be useful for us to step back a little bit and look at our own learning, because for years we have been involved in the learning process. We have learnt a lot of things, but if you look at some of the things where we remember what we have learned, you would find a lot of commonalities. And those commonalities could be that you had a good teacher or the method of learning involved you asking questions, which means it was an enquiry-based learning, or that you were solving problems. You took a concept and you were asked to solve a problem and then enhance the learning. Or if you look at the management school kind of learning it is a case-study based learning. So, there are some commonalities that lend to effective ways to learning. 

I wanted to bring in that picture because as human beings our capabilities are the same in terms of how we adapt, adopt and assimilate things.

Another view is in terms of how do you know that learning is effective. To me, the question would be: once you have learned something has it become a habit?  It is the way you would know that learning has been effective for the individual. 

For example, as we create applications in our own business performance engineering, we always talk about them as something that is important. Now, as a software engineer, as a programmer, if it has become a habit for me to make sure that applications that I develop cater to the needs of the high performance, then I would have looked at code from that perspective versus coming back later and doing code optimization. So, that is an example of making it a habit. 

More on the ground, we know the English language is the language of our business.  Now it is one thing to go to class and one thing to learn about using the language. But if that becomes your default language of conversation in the business environment then it has become a habit. And that is when the learning has become effective. So, just wanted to throw those two pieces out there to illustrate in terms of how we learn and how do we know it is effective. 

Methods of Learning

If I were to talk about methods to be used for learning, I would say that there are three pieces to learning. One is participating in the learning. As long as we are involved as a learner, there is the opportunity to learn something. So, participation is an important thing. The second is problem-solving.  So, take up something, take the concept, utilize it, and solve problems based on that. The third is to practice, and practice with peers, which is when it can then translate into a habit.

So, now having given that background, if you were to look at where technology plays a role – which is what the new world is about – and how you take that to the future? All of the things like new technology, web 2.0. virtual worlds etc. will  enable you to do that.  But it is important for us to go back and say how does the human mind take that and see how this technology can enable us to participate, to look at problems that somebody else has created that we can solve?

And that is where Web2.0 becomes an effective tool for you to see problems that somebody else has created. You take that up, apply the concept and solve the problem so that the learning is enhanced. Participation is now possible when you want to participate, when you are in the mood to learn, versus 9 to 5 or 9 to 4 or whenever that the instructor is available.  So, technology again enables that.

Now, the same thing applies to the aspect of practice. You are now able to touch and feel different sets of issues that are available irrespective of geographical boundaries. You are able to reach out to peers no matter where they are. You are able to then go out and create common solutions that you can take out based on the learning. And that is where technology today plays an important role in terms of making the learning effective. 

Posted by Srikantan Moorthy at 06:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The typical challenges we are facing with what we call ‘learning 1.0’ or what we would say is a conventional model of learning. If you look at the conventional model of learning, it is basically faceted with typical characteristics, whereby there is an instructor who is supposed to be a subject matter expert and delivers instruction to the consumers who are the learners. The focus is on the expertise of the expert and the dissemination of that to the end users who, in the process, have to assimilate that without a say in what is being fed to them. So, that is a fundamental principle in learning 1.0.

Another element which is important to understand is , with the emergence of technology and new generation mediums like e-learning or internet-based learning, there  is this problem of uni-directionality which has not yet been addressed. If we just look at it from a teacher-learner kind of a perspective- in this conventional model, there is a publisher and distributor of content and then there is a consumer, who has no say. So, that is a fundamental problem and definitely not right in the current environment where the challenges are measured, especially in terms of information overload. There are tons of information available to the learner by multiple mediums – whether it is from classroom instruction, virtual learning materials, e-learning materials, internet, or even from emergent media such as YouTube etc.

The other important thing we need to consider is the attention span of a typical audience in any medium, be it a website viewer, a viewer of a YouTube video or someone listening to an active lecture. Studies have shown that the attention span is actually going down. Even if you look at the average flipping time between television channels, you know it is a typical requirement that there be a minimum amount of attention-grabbing material so that we should be able to keep the eyeballs on the content that is being projected. Because the attention span has gone down, the challenge for the producers of content now is to get that awe factor or to interest factor from the audience.

So, if you just want to address this uni-directionality, just invert it. Instead of the learners being fed, let the learners decide what they want. That’s what is called the emergence of the “just-in-time learning” with a personal element. This will be discussed in my next blog post.

Posted by Srinivas Padmanabhuni at 05:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)