Factory whistles (pwbaker/flickr.com)

Wishful thinking

Learning strategy

Stopping work to learn remains the ideal. After all, many of us carry the memory of residential higher education as a powerful moment of personal growth, at the end of our teenage years and prior to entry into the workforce. Formal learning in the present includes both in-service workshops and trainings as well as various forms of continued professional development (CPD) offered by training providers and higher education institutions. These were traditionally face-to-face and are increasingly delivered at distance (online). Why do we wish so earnestly for more formal learning? Our expressed wish reflects our willingness to stay current and improve. However, wishing for more time to stop work and engage in formal learning is likely to remain wishful thinking because of at least four factors: Time – time is the scarcest resource and formal training requires stopping work to learn, in a learning culture that values task completion. Applicability – learning formally then …

Ebb and Flow (Alistair Nicol/flickr.com)

Currency

Learning strategy

Knowledge skills are increasingly important due to the pace of change in knowledge. We know that staying current cannot rely solely on formal training. This is both because we seldom have the time and resources to stop our work in order to learn and because the pace of change is faster than our ability to capture and codify it as formal knowledge. The notion that I can know in myself what I need to know is no longer an ideal. Instead, we develop networks and activities to ensure we can access and contribute to the most-current knowledge. We look for knowledge sources that provide currency, authority, and speed of access. Some of us remain frustrated with abundance. Yet, we have learned to accept that abundance is not dysfunctional. It means one won’t read or know everything. The many available depersonalized, electronic channels (such as the keyword-based newsletters and searchable online …