Design your own Learning Journey
In the last week’s newsletter, I talked about heutagogy and made a proposal- Become the architect of your own learning.
In this newsletter, I will give you actionable steps that you can take to build this journey. This is not an established framework but something I built to help me prioritise my learning.
In my opinion, frameworks, processes, thinking tools are there to guide us, you don’t have to necessarily stick to them and can choose to take the parts that is most relevant to you and use it the way it best works for you.
Let’s talk about learning, all learning can be broken down to 3 key elements:
What you are learning ie the content, the subject matter, the theme, the skill or even behaviour
Why you are learning something ie how is it relevant to you
How you learn it ie the procedural, the structure, the medium of learning
WHAT-WHY-HOW
To have a more holistic approach to learning that is not focussed only on cognitive, I propose we choose the Head-Heart-Hand approach.
Head: This is the cognitive, the thinking, the intellectual pursuits.
Heart: I like to think of this as inner work, what do I need to learn to be more centred, more rounded human being, that can bring me more joy.
Hand: These are skills that I want to acquire, things I want to be able to do.
HEAD-HEART-HAND
Marry these two: What-Why-How and Head-Heart-Hand to build your own learning journey.
Let’s look at an example,
There are no strict boundaries in Head-Heart-Hand but it is a way to have a rounded, holistic approach to design your learning. I may want to put learning how to bake a cake in the heart section because it brings me joy while it is also a skill.
Once you have done this, it’s time to think about how much you want to learn and how will you evaluate that you have reached this goal.
For example: I knew I wanted to learn how to play ukulele, but I did not want to do a concert, I only wanted to be able to play a wide range of songs. For me it happened when I could look at a song sheet and switch between chords. Once I was comfortable doing that, I knew I had reached my learning objective.
The goal of all your learning ventures can not be to become the perfect in everything-it’s a journey and the best part about designing your journey is that you decide the destination.
Some of the ways you can build your own evaluations are:
Set a SMART goal for your learning.
Use the Bloom’s taxonomy to identify where you want the learning to stop.
And that’s it.
You have done it.
You have designed your journey. Come back to it as many times as you want. Add to it, remove and continue to reflect.
Remember, when it comes to learning we end up optimising for learning when it is relevant, it is meaningful and it is fun.
You can download this worksheet that gives step by step method to create your learning journey.
After completing the worksheet, reflect about the process.
Use these questions:
Take charge. Choose what you want to do, how you want to do it and do it. In the next newsletter, we will look at tools that can help us to be better learners.
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Keep Learning!
Adios,
Avni