September has always seemed to me a time of beginnings. That feeling is no doubt a remnant of many years' experiences with starting school, and it’s also the feeling that accompanies transition from summer to fall (my favorite season!). It's a time for new backpacks, new sweaters, and new books (not-beach-reads), and a time for [...]
In my work on self-directed learning, I have aimed to support people whose learning projects need a plan. I provide guidance on how to engage a self-directed learning process in a deliberate way so you can efficiently and effectively satisfy your deeper and longer-term learning needs. But (as I have discussed before) that’s not always [...]
When you work in L&D, you’d think that learning would come easy. But we have the same challenges as people in other fields in trying to remain abreast of changes and to continuously improve our knowledge and skill. While L&D folks aren’t generally required to log development credits, the field is changing so much that [...]
In my February newsletter, I highlighted the fact that self-directed learning involves a number of people: people who impart (teach), people who engage, and people who inspire. When you can get all three of those dynamics mutually occurring in one group of people, you can begin to get a sense of the community of practice [...]
One of the biggest myths about self-directed learning is that it’s done alone. Picture the determined leader holed up reading and note-taking, or the undiscovered athlete practicing a sport for hours, experimenting and self-critiquing, or the up-and-coming professional staying up late to watch tutorials and fine-tune their work. But it’s likely that these solitary activities [...]
I’m a big believer in turn-of-the-year resolutions and thoughtful goal-setting. My goals for 2022 include deliberate choices about my learning projects (apropos since I’ve been preaching self-directed learning quite a bit in the last several years). I’ve charted two projects so far – one of which serves an immediate need, and one of which is [...]
"If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else." – Lawrence J. Peter The turn of the new year seems to be an obvious cue for writing or revising goals, and some of your personal 2022 ambitions may be about learning something new or deepening a particular skill (personal [...]
There’s nothing like turning the page on a new year to inspire a fresh start. Breathe in. Things may still be a bit wobbly, but we can tentatively imagine that a certain equilibrium may be achieved in the coming year – enough so that we can begin to reinvent our lives in all the ways [...]
If you read into the background of notable people who are exemplary lifelong learners, you can find some common ground – they read quite a bit, they set goals, they experiment, they cultivate curiosity, they schedule time for learning projects (rise early, set aside time before bed), they walk or exercise when they need to [...]
When I was researching the Learning Guild report on self-directed learning, I noted an observation that came up in a few articles: that learners who control their own learning do so rather indiscriminately. They don’t exactly plan their approach; they take what they can find and run with it, continuing to explore as their needs [...]