Self-directed learning
[Intro]
Why self-directed learning?
[Content]
Plan your learning
Choose your learning goals
Perhaps the hallmark of self-directed learning is its emphasis on choosing your own goals for a particular learning project. Traditional learning gives that privilege and responsibility to the teacher or whoever designs the curriculum. Setting your own learning goals assures that you are learning purposefully, filtering out information that don’t serve your objectives. It also makes learning and remembering what you learned easier because you are learning out of passion, not obligation.
To identify your learning goals, simply ask yourself: “What do I want to achieve from this learning experience?” By reflecting on this question, you will come up with a few useful answers. You could ask the question repeatedly until you get to the core reason behind your desire to learn.
For example, after asking this question a couple of times, I realized that I wanted to research various ways on how one can live more sustainably in the Philippines not because I wanted to write an article or author an entire book about it, but because I simply want to understand how I can personally make the transition into a better way of life. The latter is the main goal, the former is a way to achieve that goal.
It is also important to remember that the learning goals that you set for yourself at the beginning of a learning project is not cast in stone. Feel free to refine it as your perspective broadens farther in your project.
Choose a learning method
There is no “one size fits all” method of acquiring knowledge, so it’s important that you identify the best learning method for your specific project. Do you like reading? Would you rather listen to lectures? Will discussing the subject with others help you better understand what you are learning? Should you teach what you learned instead? Could attending workshops, online classes, or in-person classes help you better?
Reflect on what learning strategies worked for you in the past, and combine them with other strategies that pick your interest, to create a more fulfilling learning experience.
Decide how to evaluate the results of your learning
Before starting a self-directed learning project, it can be very helpful to determine how you will evaluate your learning experience. Evaluating your learning helps you achieve two important things: first, it tells you how much and how well you really learned and second, it gives you something to share to others – a practice that would even give you more feedback on your learning.
What’s unique in evaluating self-directed learning projects is that you get to choose the method that is best for you. There are two main ways on evaluating a self-directed learning project.
Focus on the process. All self-directed learning projects are already products of their own. The feelings, the realizations, the insights that come from “doing” the learning project are already benchmarks that determine the effectiveness of the methods applied.
Focus on a product. While all self-directed learning projects can be evaluated from the intangibles they create while they are pursued, putting a tangible output at the center of a learning project can enhance the learning experience. A tangible product or a project-driven strategy could provide you with something to show people what you have accomplished. This is very useful in getting valuable feedback from the perspective of other people and in building a portfolio of work that you can use to build your credentials.
Create an initial plan
Writing down your learning goals, your learning method of choice, and your evaluation strategy on paper might be everything you need to you create a structure for your self-directed learning project. There are books that teach you how to create a more detailed learning plan that resemble a curriculum, but keeping this process as simple as possible at the start could help you focus more on the learning itself. That said, you might want to read Chapter 10 of Ronald Gross’ book Peak Learning to pick up some light strategies on planning your learning projects. His discussion of things you could do before learning (Chapter 6) also looks really helpful. I’ll share one or two of his strategies in a future post.
In Gross’ other book The Independent Scholar’s Handbook, I found a planning process that can be applied to self-directed learning projects, especially those with a more academic or research leaning. In Chapter 2, Gross shared the process of creating a “pre-plan.” What I love about the “pre-plan” is its simplicity and scalability. You can use a pre-plan alone to guide your self-directed learning project or scale it up into a more thorough plan which you can then use as a proposal to possible funding sources.
Here’s how to create a “pre-plan.”
Write one to two sentences to describe your idea.
Expand your idea by writing a one page write up about it. Include a few supporting thoughts.
Allow the idea to percolate in your mind. While doing so, get some feedback.
Now that you have some useful ideas from the feedback you got, create a pre-plan by writing one paragraph for each of these:
Background
Problem or question
Objectives
Plan
Outcome
Resources needed
How to present
How to get feedback on the results
People interested in the results
How to reach people
Condense your idea and plan into one paragraph. You may use this paragraph to circulate your idea to interested people who might be able to provide you with additional feedback.
Look for the best and most appropriate resources
Decide the range of resources to look for
Look for resources
Evaluate resources
Choose the best resources
While you are learning
Note-taking
Retention
Evaluate your learning
Article
Book
Share and get feedback
Blog
Best Books on Self-directed Learning
Peak Learning
Don’t Go Back to School
The Independent Scholar’s Handbook
Peak Learning + Kio Process for Self-directed Learning Projects
Peak Learning Process
- Choose your learning goals
- Choose the best learning resources
- Decide how to evaluate the results of your learning
Kio’s Process
- Choose a learning method
- Find learning resources
- Evaluate source of information
- Stick with it
Combined process
- Choose your learning goals
- Choose a learning method
- Find learning resources
- Evaluate source of information
- Choose the best learning resources
- Decide how to evaluate the results of your learning
References
Young, S. (2019). Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career (Illustrated edition). Harper Business.
- It’s about how you make decisions about what to learn and why.
- Self-direction is about who is in the driver’s seat for the project, not about where it takes place.
- Taking responsibility for your own learning: deciding what you want to learn, how you want to learn it, and crafting your own plan to learn what you need to. You’re the one in charge, and you’re the one who’s ultimately responsible for the results you generate.