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BECOMING A PERPETUAL LEARNER
Expanding Your Opportunities for Learning
NOW YOU KNOW MOST OF WHAT YOU NEED to know to manage your own learning. You know how to:
• evaluate your previous learning.
• develop a personal plan for needed learning.
• estimate your potential for learning.
• reframe your ideas about learning.
• recognize the value of well-established learning theories.
• be an effective participant in seven different ways of learning.
• select the way of learning that matches your goals for learning.
• maximize learning through appropriate intensity, frequency, and duration.
• assess your learning.
• find the information you need to support your learning.
• to discover opportunities for continuing your learning.
• to find ways to share your learning.
Perpetual learners are constantly seeking to expand their opportunities for learning. They frequently revise their plan for learning. They know where to find resources for formal and informal learning. In this chapter you will find suggestions about how to discover learning opportunities in familiar and unfamiliar places. You will also be encouraged to think about how you can facilitate learning for others and share your learning.
REVISING YOUR PLAN FOR LEARNING
Periodic Reassessment
Recall that your plan for learning was based on an honest examination of your current learning and a careful analysis of needed learning. Your plan also included a gap analysis to identify the discrepancies between current learning and needed learning. When new learning flows into this gap, as it surely will, the gap closes. The old gap is filled, partially or completely, with new learning. Meanwhile, forces within your organization—a job change, a new technology, or new modes of organization—reshape your concept of needed learning. New personal interests and aspirations may also emerge. Perhaps you make a career change or decide to undertake a new course of study. All of these situations provide the occasion for reassessment of your plan for learning. The planning cycle repeats because this is the Age of Perpetual Learning. All you need to do is to go back to your personal plan for learning and build on what you have already accomplished: set new goals, describe the gap, and develop a new action plan.
CONTINUING YOUR LEARNING
Finding the Resources
As you develop and reassess your plan for learning, you face the challenge of locating additional resources for continuing your learning. We cannot suggest exactly which resources will be best for you, but we can show you where to look for them so that on your own initiative you can find appropriate opportunities for continuing your learning.
If your plan calls for continuing some aspect of your formal education and the next step for you is to complete high school, most community college, military, or high school counselors can inform you about how to prepare for the test of General Educational Development (GED). If the next level for you is college or community college, you can explore the programs of different colleges through Peterson’s: The Education Supersite (www.petersons.com). Many colleges and universities now provide bachelor’s degree completion programs in accelerated (weekend or evening) formats. The Peterson’s website is also a valuable resource if the next level for you is graduate or professional education. By selecting the menu option Pursue Graduate Programs you can explore more than 35,000 programs by institution or field, including business schools, law schools, and others. A key word search by field will take you to programs around the country and you can then explore, usually through a link (a prearranged connection between websites), the program offered at a particular institution. Formal graduate programs will be found in traditional academic departments, but you may also find degree programs—often with a more “applied” emphasis and special concern for adult learners—in the continuing education or extension divisions of these institutions. Providers of programs for adults usually belong to the University Continuing Education Association (UCEA). If you visit the website for this association, (www.nucea.edu), you will find a state-by-state listing of member institutions, often with direct links to their programs.
If your plan for further learning does not necessarily include a degree program but calls for short-term studies that lead to a certificate, or simply for a course, workshop, or training opportunity, the options available are nearly limitless.
The first place to look is within your own organization. Most organizations have some form of training and development provided through their personnel or human resources division. Look for listings or catalogs of training activities. Some large organizations have corporate universities. Examples include Motorola University, AT&T Learning Center, Disney University, Sears University, and IBM’s Global Campus. A comprehensive list of corporate universities is available on a website (www.kwheeler.com) under the Corporate Education menu.
You can continue your search for short-term programs, individual courses, or workshops by checking the websites and catalogs of community colleges, four-year colleges, and universities in your region. Some large universities provide extensive continuing education opportunities across metropolitan areas. For example, the University of California at Los Angeles, through UCLA Extension, provides more than 4,500 programs for adult learners in over fifty locations in the Los Angeles area. In addition, UCLA Extension provides continuing education opportunities for nonresidents (people living outside of California) across the U.S. and worldwide through intensive programs, short-term certificate programs, online courses, and other formats. At the UCLA website (www.ucla.edu/home/continuing.html) you can find more information and a catalog of courses. Other examples with programs comparable to those at UCLA Extension can be found at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies (www.scps.nyu.edu) and University of Minnesota’s University College (www.cee.umn.edu).
You do not need to live in a populated metropolitan area to have access to opportunities for adult learners. Multicampus community colleges or state university systems often have programs for adults in rural areas. For example, Colorado Mountain College offers programs at thirteen sites in small towns in the Rocky Mountains west of Denver (www.coloradomtn.edu). The University of Alaska state system provides an extensive network of branch campuses in rural towns and remote areas. A map of those remote areas is available online (info.alaska.edu).
Another avenue for furthering your learning, and one that is increasing in scope and growing in importance today, is the postsecondary sector of proprietary schools, sometimes known as trade schools. These include business and secretarial schools, industrial and technical institutes, schools for medical assistants and technicians, art schools, and language schools. Some offer degrees, but most also offer short-term certificate programs or a sequence of related courses. Although these schools are run as for-profit businesses, they are carefully regulated by state and federal agencies and they have their own national, specialized accrediting bodies. If you want to locate these schools, begin by looking under schools in the Yellow Pages of your phone directory or on the Internet for Yellow Pages in other cities. If you want to check on accreditation status, contact one or the other of two national accrediting bodies: Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, or Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges of Technology.
Many professional associations also set standards and provide opportunities for continuing education. For example, in business the American Management Association (www.mce.be) offers courses, multiday public workshops, and onsite customized training. Opportunities are made available around the world through the Global Training Resources Program. In addition, self-study training and development programs in print, audio-cassette/workbook, and CD-ROM formats are offered. For attorneys, the American Bar Association (ABA) provides resources for continuing education. The ABA website (www.abanet.org) provides a list of all state requirements for continuing legal education (CLE) and an online catalog. For health professionals, such as nurses or physician assistants, standards for continuing medical education (CME) are set by various professional bodies that also control certification. Opportunities for further education are found at large university health sciences centers, at local hospitals and clinics, and through private companies that conduct CME as a business. CME opportunities are also available at local, state, and national conventions of professional bodies, and these are often sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. If you are engaged in a type of work that might be defined broadly as a profession, seek out the standards and learning opportunities of that profession.
If you work in a business, particularly a small business, you might want to seek training and development opportunities through various business affiliations such as local chambers of commerce. A website called Online Chambers (online-chamber.com) provides state, national, and international listings, and links to local chambers of commerce with their lists of courses and workshops. Another website called The Training Registry (www.tregistry.com) provides menus of courses, providers, and local listings for training opportunities in your area.
If your schedule does not permit going to a college campus or other site for classes, you may want to explore the growing number of distance learning arrangements that make it possible to study at home or the workplace. Distance learning, also called distributed learning, uses various formats to connect students and instructors. For example, the distance learning division of Indiana University lists several delivery systems, including independent study courses, videoconferencing, Internet, satellite, videotape, broadcast/cable, and two-way audio and video instruction at remote sites. If you return to the Peterson’s website mentioned earlier, you will find distance learning programs by subject area (www.petersons.com/dlearn) and these will give you the college and university sponsors. If you are interested only in web-based course materials, you can search through World Lecture Hall (www.utexas.edu/world/lecture) to find a list by field of courses created by faculty worldwide who are using the Web to deliver class materials.
Distance learning opportunities are likely to expand significantly in the years just ahead, as computer and software companies create partnerships with universities. For example, Lucent Technologies (www.lucent.com/cedl) through its Center for Excellence in Distance Learning (CEDL) is already working with recognized distance education providers such as Indiana University, Penn State University, and the University of Wisconsin-Extension.
Not all distance learning is through university-based providers. A fast-growing area of educational opportunity is commercial Internet education. Companies are now creating online universities that offer courses for a fee. One example is Ziff-Davis University, which offers online courses as part of its broader activity in publishing magazines and managing trade shows. For a monthly fee, subscribers to ZDU (www.zdu.com) can take an unlimited number of courses, mainly to develop information technology skills. Another example is Jones International University (http://www.international.edu/home.html), which markets itself as “The University of the Web.”
In addition to these structured and semistructured opportunities for continuing your learning, many informal arrangements for learning exist in familiar places such as local museums, zoos, historic sites, churches, clubs, factories, medical centers, symphonies, theaters, and other not-for-profit organizations. In recent years these organizations have become quite expert at providing user-friendly exhibits, tours, short courses, and workshops. Although one might think of plays and films primarily as entertainment, at another level there is much to be learned from them, particularly about other countries, cultures, and periods of history. Independent bookstores and many of the new bookstore chains now offer inviting environments for browsing (complete with coffee bar), and many carry good collections of foreign magazines and newspapers, audiocassettes, CDs, and software. If you are too busy to visit a bookstore or library, you can seek sources of electronic books (www.kbc.com/html/-ebooks.htm) or subscribe to an electronic book service and download “e-books” to your laptop so you can read as you commute or travel.
We are witnessing a worldwide revolution in access to adult learning opportunities that is both a cause and result of the Information Age. These expanding opportunities for learning have become an essential feature of the new era. If you want to learn something—almost anything—there are providers eager to teach you. Perpetual learners actively seek out these opportunities.
LEADERSHIP FOR LEARNING
Sharing What You Know
As you develop skill in managing your own learning, you will not only become better at learning but you will actually learn more. You may even feel a newfound joy in learning. Then you will want to learn more. Success breeds success. Certain natural consequences flow from your growing expertise and satisfaction as a learner. Your new learning provides you with improved performance and expanded capacity. As the cycle of perpetual learning continues you are given new opportunities and you are challenged again with new learning.
In addition, as a person with emerging expertise in learning you may have the occasion to help someone else with their learning, or perhaps even serve as someone’s mentor. When training and development experiences are being planned, you can make a significant contribution by representing the interests of participants in that process. You can identify learning outcomes and suggest what ways of learning should be given consideration. These may be new roles for you, but you can gain unexpected satisfactions from providing leadership for learning.
Furthermore, you may even become so interested in the process of learning that you want to explore the role of facilitator. If so, you can learn more about the facilitator’s role in learning from the companion to this book, Effective Training Strategies: A Comprehensive Guide to Maximizing Learning in Organizations (Davis and Davis, 1998).1 Standing beside the natural learner in most of us is the eager teacher waiting to be born. One important way to further your learning is to try to teach what you know to someone else. In fact, teaching someone what you have learned is one of the best ways to learn. We might even think of it as an eighth way of learning.
One of the key challenges in the learning organization is to get people to share their knowledge. There is a tendency to hoard what we know, protecting our own little competitive advantage by knowing what nobody else knows. We have all met people who maintain their position, sometimes even terrorizing people of lesser rank, through the power of their knowledge. Francis Bacon was right: knowledge is power. On the other hand, knowledge becomes even more powerful when it is shared. What makes an organization strong is shared knowledge. What makes a civilization strong is accumulated wisdom.
Organizations that aspire to become effective learning organizations are not only interested in stimulating individual learning for all employees, they also want to develop mechanisms for sharing that learning. This is why they are talking about knowledge management and appointing chief learning officers. What they are encountering is a huge inertia about sharing. The two favorite excuses they identify are: “I didn’t know someone else needed this information,” and “I didn’t know so-and-so knew about that.” Some organizations are rearranging physical space to foster better communication, some are developing learning communities around identified interests, and others are investing heavily in computer systems for saving, retrieving, and sharing information. All of these efforts are creating organizational cultures where sharing knowledge is highly valued. Not only is perpetual learning an expectation in most organizations today, shared learning is also a necessity. It makes sense if you realize that we are truly living in a new era, where knowledge is the most important natural resource.
We hope that the ultimate byproduct of all this individual learning and shared knowledge is a better world. We all need organizations that are more efficient and effective, workers and volunteers who take pride in and find joy in their daily tasks, and leaders who are inspiring. We need lively colleagues, and we ourselves need to be stimulating companions to those around us. Whatever you may believe about the ultimate progress of civilization, the new era and the new century provide promising opportunities for a better way of life.
The new era of rapid change plays to the greatest strength of human beings: adaptability. The squirrel will always gather nuts by instinct and the beaver will always build its house in the same way. Humans are the learning species, the fittest to learn. We can adapt to rapid change by constantly seeking ways to expand our opportunities for learning. Even more important, we are capable of developing our varied talents to the fullest and dreaming dreams of what might be.