Adult learning is a tricky business. Since my my civil services preparation days I have been trying to figure out the best ways of learning for myself. Back then I had tried multiple ideas and methods – all offering varying degrees of success.
Then I went for my post graduation at TISS, and frankly I thought that I had outgrown classroom learning a long time ago. But certain things were different this time in the classrooms of TISS. When there was a case discussion, I would pay more attention. If it was a one way discourse, my mind would wander off. If the Professor asked thought provoking questions, linked theory to real life and questioned my pre-conceived notions, my mind would start buzzing with ideas.
Cut to the present, I was invited to deliver a guest lecture for MBA students at Rizvi Institute of Management. Tables had turned. I had to remind myself of my own struggles of attending lectures. So I put down some of my reflections on learning and designed the lecture a bit differently. See the lecture plan here.
Turns out that instructional design does play a part and I got some good feedback for the lecture.
In this dynamically moving world, constantly learning is the only way to keep up. While there are many theories and ideas, and all may seem relevant depending upon what works for you, I am going to highlight the ones that have been the most meaningful to me and which have personally helped me to learn better.
Quick Feedback is important, the infinite learning loop works best:
We have limited time. And if I am not able to use that to learn new skills, apply them and see the impact immediately, I tend to lose interest. Quick feedback loops help to deliver a shot of dopamine which helps to keep plodding on with seemingly uninteresting practice. This is probably why breaking down an entire course into byte-sized pieces helps. This brings me to the second point.
Need for Learning has to be clear, a burning need is even better
I have managed to finish a course of advanced excel far more effortlessly than a nice course on philosophical thought. While one had an immediate impact and met a burning need(to build a dashboard at work), the other was more of an intellectual interest. Learning for the sake of learning may not always be the way to go, a clear needs based approach seems to work in my favour.
Experiential Learning Rocks
Building and failing, and trying again delivers better learning outcomes. Putting your learnings into practice is perhaps the best way to see results and initiate the quick feedback loop. At the Rizvi lecture, we started off by building an app for a fictitious travel company and prepared slide decks as the app grew from an idea to a full fledged organisation. This envisioning of an app helped the students to identify the core purpose of the presentation and everything else flowed from that. Structure and flow also impacted their cosmetic choices.
Likewise, while at Samsung – I attended a course on Behaviour Interviewing Techniques followed by an online course on Udemy. Armed with that knowledge, I went onto tinker with my interviewing techniques. I introduced variations of questions and follow-up probes and verified the outcomes real time – Whether it led to the right hire, what was the select to joining ratio and of course, what was the impact that a new hire would make in the short term. With every interview, I was able to improve my style and content of the interview. Even though, on a lighter note, I have been told that I come across as an intimidating interviewer. And trust me I am trying to do better but alas!
Method of Instruction matters
At the end of the day how one learns depends on the medium of learning. For many a blended approach works the best. On the job learning works well when the topic is related to work, but unrelated topics where avenues of practice or application may be few, I struggle quite a bit. I have also been more open to watching videos or listening to podcasts along with reading up on topics to fasten learning acquisition, so that I can spend more time on application and getting real time feedback. Even simply, just asking someone who knows the topic well to teach me. That sort of peer learning has been quite effective too.
I would love to hear your thoughts on how you learn and how you’d like to be taught!