1 - Professionals spend 40% of their time in online peer communities – Social Business News
Nearly 80% of respondents participate in online groups to help others by sharing information and experiences; 66% participate in a professional community of colleagues and peers; 41% participate in groups to be seen as someone knowledgeable.
2 - The Opportunity—and Threat—of Self-Directed Learning - Celia Steele
Malcolm Knowles believed that adults want—and need—to be seen and treated as self-directed learners. But many adult learners don’t know how to be self-directed because their prior learning experience (in the K-12 teacher- and curriculum-centric pedagogical model) didn’t prepare them to participate.
Knowles and his collaborators wrote in more recent editions of The Adult Learner: “The minute adults walk into an activity labeled ‘education,’ ‘training,’ or anything synonymous, they hark back to their conditioning in their previous school experience, put on their dunce hats of dependency, fold their arms, sit back, and say ‘teach me.’”
Don’t let your learners put on their dunce hats. More than ever, learners must think strategically about how they build their professional skills and knowledge over the course of their career. You have to recognize self-direction as an inherent need of adult learners and help those learners clearly see where your organization fits in the strategy.
