SELF-MANAGED LEARNING
Self-managed learning is a way in which group of people and individuals find different ways of learning things that can be learned from the society of which they are a part or workplace where are they working or any diversified environment surrounding can be a source of self-managed learning. It also involves setting up the new objectives and goals of learning for the evaluation of the learning purpose and trying to achieve the set goals and objectives. Every day is a new day that can teach you or make you learn many new things in fact in a single day you can learn newest of things by being with people belonging to different cultures, personality, behaviors, and varied perceptions, and we must understand that class or coaching classes are not the only place of learning but one can also learn from their peer group, family, close friends, nowadays social media plays a very important role that enables learning through interaction. (J Rowley, 1996).
Self-managed learning is a concept that helps people to come up with their own plans, strategies and procedures of learning, it may be long term or short term learning, like for example short term learning can be best explained through a student who learns in order to pass his exam and stand as qualified for the next standard but this is typically a short term based learning that has a short term orientation and a myopic purpose that is to pass an exam! At the same time it becomes important for people to acquire knowledge that would be long term in its orientation and objectives because the environment is now facing tough challenges because of the advancement of technology, so people need knowledge that they can easily use in their personal as well as professional life. (E.L.Boyer,1990).
Self-managed learning can also be referred to as a structured approach that can not only make the learning process work more efficiently but also enables individuals to learn things that otherwise they would have not learned, there are seven major characteristics of Self-Managed learning they have been discussed below: (Leary, Malcolm et al 1986).
1) Strategic
It means that people who have their own strategy with their learning, and have a long term as well as big picture for learning in their minds because too often learning is driven learning that is to pass an exam or to learn some new software or a computer language. But people might need to have an update of their present skills, abilities, qualities and their values and interests so that they can have better preparation for the future career and upcoming opportunities in life. (P Terenzinn 1999).
2) Syllabus free
There is no definite syllabus for self-managed learning and is driven by the specific needs of the individuals and the organizations.
3) Self-managed
People involved in SML have to take their own responsibility, self management is necessary and includes valuable interactions with other people also, individuals might be dependant, interdependent and counter dependant.
4) Shared
SML enables the learners to interact and connect with other people and also to integrate their own learning and organizational needs. (Cunningham & Ian 1986).
5) Supported
There is full support for the learners in meeting the goals they set for themselves in the strategic contract of learning, for example forming of learning groups.
6) Structured
SML provides a strong and a rigorous structure that helps learning and the structure is not content bounded it is content-free. Also the learning structures are clearly and carefully designed in order to suit the needs of the organization, the culture and the individuals.
There are three learning styles predominant:
- Visual Learning,
- Auditory Learning and
- Kinaesthetic Learning.
I am a visual learning able to process the most information using my eyes. I absorb what I see, making my eyes excel in anything that has visual information, such as graphs and charts. Like a visual learner, I can make the most of my particular style by making my notes as interesting and colourful as possible. I Use highlighters on key passages and flashcards to help me memorize better the information.
APPROACHES TO SELF-MANAGED LEARNING
Learning through doing research is now an important part of the modern and independent learning, as the power and ability to use the internet can provide you with last minute data and that too from variety of sources. Social applications and software help the individuals in their education and training through blogs, Wikipedia’s, tools and applications for the creation of various multi-media tools. (J Rowley, 1996). There are different tools and techniques of learning, discussed below are some of the approaches to self managed learning-
1) Conferences and seminars
I can learn through seminars and conferences, my experience over there can help me make changes for the future, as help giving opportunities to me in order to present my knowledge about any particular issue to others and finally ending up by learning new things. These types of seminars and conferences help in building self confidence in the people, public speaking skills and development of interpersonal and presentation skills that are needed to be possessed by the individuals in an organization. (Leary &Malcolm et al 1986).
2) Social networks
There are many social networks these days like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and many more where people spend more than average hours in a day like four or five hours if they are spending in a way that they learn new and different things from people by interacting with them, getting information on the latest topics, conversing with friends and new people belonging to different cultures etc, various social groups are also created on these social networking websites that help them learning in a more collective manner than individualistic learning. (Cunningham & Ian 1986).
3) Internet
Personally I am helped through learning by studying different articles by different authors which concerns various studies belonging to various backgrounds and themes, taking into account risk management and strategy formulation as now there are different websites that can be browsed on the internet and help people to learn new things from them. (P Terenzini 1999).
DIFFERENT WAYS IN WHICH LIFELONG LEARNING CAN BE ENCOURAGED IN THE PROFESSIONAL AS WELL AS PERSONAL CONTEXTS.
Self-managed learning or lifelong learning basically means continuously learning and contributing personally to the development of an individual in the profession context as well.
Most of the individuals have personal judgment of the ways and means in which lifelong learning can be assessed and hence forth encouraged; the evaluation can be done by evaluating the strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and the threats i.e. the famous SWOT analysis which is explained below very beautifully. (J Rowley,1996)
SWOT ANALYSIS
This is used for self-evaluation, SWOT helps to enhance the personal as well as professional learning with the help of other tools that are which are often forms of self reflective learning and there is a continuous professional development, self-reflective learning is about learning and trying some of the new judgments, opinions and personal understanding and the actions that the individual must undertake in a proper way, and SWOT analysis must be done from time to time in order to update your skills and improve them. (Leary& Malcolm et al 1986).
SWOT analysis is done basically to assess an individual’s current skills and competencies against a job description and identify where improvements are needed. Below is an example of SWOT analysis of my job Executive Head Chef in NHS.
| What is your strength? | What are your weaknesses? |
| -Budgetary control
-Develop quality control measures -Recruitment, Induction and training of staff -Planning and Drafting of Annual Business Plan -Menu planning |
-Supporting staff through change
-management skills-strategic thinking (planning ahead and predicting what was going to happen) -Being a leader -Auditing kills -Reducing Food waste management |
| Are there any opportunities that you may have in the near future to develop yourself? | Are there any potential threats to your development? |
| -Project management course
– Level 3 Award in effective auditing and inspection skills -HND Business management level 5 |
– staff members who are unhappy in the current situation
-current climate of closure and cutbacks |
SELF-REFLECTIVE LEARNING
Self-reflective learning also helps to learn new skills at the work place and aims at developing personal and professional skills by having tasks and the responsibility. There is a continual professional development (CPD) therefore combines new ideas, approaches and techniques that helps to develop at the personal learning and grows at certain level. (E.L Boyer 1990).
Positive impacts of Self-managed Learning at the individual level-
- Team-work skills.
- Communication skills.
- Presentation skills.
ADVANTAGES OF SELF-LEARNING AT THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE ORGANIZATIONAL LEVEL
Decision making ability
Self-managed learning helps me for acquiring exceptional decision making skills by learning experience that I can get from the education or the work-experience.
There are also ethical issues where I can learn about moral judgment from my personal experiences that can add advantage to the organization in a mere professional manner.
Problem solving skills
These kinds of skills can be enhanced through self-learning and can help me to possess these skills that are transferrable and can be acquired from persons from my work, interests, hobbies and education can be applied on how to solve various problems practically that can be applied in the organization. (Leary &Malcolm et al 1986).
Organization prefers those people in who can be flexible in their working patterns and can be assigned to different tasks as per the need of the company, so there must not be any personal commitments of the employees so that they are restrained from working in the prescribed manner of working. An individual can acquire this by the means of self-learning by focusing on the organizational objectives. (P Terenzini 1999).
Benefits of PDP to academic performance
- Focus on the learning and confidence.
- Motivated individuals.
- Performance improvement.
- Reduction of stress, fun in work.
- Awareness of new styles and techniques that can be applied to the problems at workplace.
- Strengthened academic performance.
Benefits of PDP to professional life
- Clarity about the work you want to do in your life.
- Confidence and transparency in making decisions.
- Enhanced skills, attributes and qualities.
- Job competency increases.
- Improved planning and problem-solving ability.
- Development of positive attitudes.
Benefits of PDP to personal life
- Understanding yourself and how do you tackle various situations.
- Being able to make better decisions and appropriate choices for complex problems.
- Increased awareness of your needs and the ways to fulfill them.
- Helps in developing an optimistic and a straight forward-looking approach.
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