The Future of Learning

The other day, I stumbled across an article by John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler titled "Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0". I couldn't help but noticed how the article outlines the future of learning by speaking about several effective approaches that CoachingOurselves currently employs.

It talks about how Web 2.0 technologies have paved the way for new styles of learning. Since our current educational institutions will soon not be able to sustain the growing population and growing demand for higher education, we need to find new ways to educate ourselves and each other. They say "social learning is based on the premise that our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions." CoachingOurselves utilizes social learning through its self-directed peer learning groups. These groups then work together to coach themselves through conversations about their own "management happenings". This approach is highly effective, as enforced by a study by Richard J. Light of the Harvard Graduate School of Education that determined "one of the strongest determinants of students’ success in higher education—more important than the details of their instructors’ teaching styles—was their ability to form or participate in small study groups." The social view of learning promotes participation and collaboration. "Students who studied in groups, even only once a week, were more engaged in their studies, were better prepared for class, and learned significantly more than students who worked on their own." It is easier to obtain and remember information through natural conversation because we have become involved and engaged in the discussion.

The second aspect of social learning is "learning to be", which comes after "learning about" through group collaboration, involves fully participating in a particular field in order to put your new-found insights to action. In a typical CoachingOurselves program, participants are directed to put to practice in everyday life the new knowledge they have gained from the group. At the next meeting, the groups will discuss their experiences and outcomes from the week before. This brings us to demand-pull learning, which "shifts the focus to enabling participation in flows of action, where the focus is both on “learning to be” through enculturation into a practice as well as on collateral learning." "Demand-pull" learning is more effective than traditional "supply-push" learning because new knowledge flows as a result of our own passion and interest, rather than the knowledge of our professors and teachers being passed down as a result of their own interests.

This all brings us back to Web 2.0 technologies and how they will make "learning about" and "learning to be" more possible for more individuals around the world. We can continue to demand knowledge throughout our careers, participating in communities of practice (CoP) and self-directed peer learning groups to educate ourselves in order to create "a twenty-first century, global culture of learning".