Professional Practice
Skills
PPS-23 Self-Directed Learning (Outline)
(Adapted
from MPS 36,
Pre-class assignment
What is It?
Self-Directed Learning is learning
in which the individual is responsible for
While this sounds very formal and
linear, much on-the-job learning occurs in an informal ad hoc manner in which
goals evolve. A formal look is warranted
since most students experience is limited to the “Work to achieve the goals”
part, since the school and instructor do the rest.
Self-directed learning is the
primary way you will develop your fund of knowledge and skills when you leave
school. There are two categories of
self-directed learning that will be important , Reactive Learning and Proactive
Learning
Reactive Learning is prompted by some immediate
need. You may be working on a project
and find that you have to develop expertise in cryogenic processing or surface
coating. You may be promoted to the
ranks of management and recognize that, without some training, you have the
capability to be a really bad manager.
Regardless of the topic, the learning will arise from a need and will be
definable in scope and time. This unit
focuses on reactive learning.
Proactive Learning is the maintenance and extension of
your knowledge and skills without a specific goal. Sometimes this is called “keeping up with
technology”. Reactive learning occurs
while reading this month’s issue of Machine Design, Business Week, or the
Atlantic Monthly. It occurs when your
natural curiosity has you disassembling an old lawnmower, even though you are a
process engineer responsible for the production of toilet paper.
Like
reactive learning, proactive learning can have a formal component. You can schedule a certain number of hours in
your week to read technical journals, business journals, news journals, or
attend short courses and conferences.
This can be done to keep abreast of the field, to prepare for some amorphously
defined future, or just to keep yourself from petrifying.
New Concepts
Locating Resources,
Evaluating Resources, Learning Information, Assessing Learning
Why Do It?
School is
not enough. Four (or eight) years of
engineering school can’t prepare you for everything you will need to know or be
able to do.
After the
first week on the job you may be amazed at the depth of your ignorance, and
wonder how you are going to catch up.
After 30 years on the job, you will be amazed at how much catching up
you have already done. (That is when you
will be boring the next generation of engineers with tales of how it was in
“the old days” when you had CD’s and Pentium laptops with floppy disks.)
To be worth
your salary in the first year (and in 30 years) you will have to learn new
skills and acquire new knowledge.
Pending the development of a direct connection between a computer and
your brain, you will need techniques to help you learn.
How to Do It
In this
unit we will overview the process of reactive learning, and in the next four
units (PPS-24 through PPS-27), look at specific skills.
As you saw
in the “What is It?” section, reactive learning is one more example of Project
Management/Problem Solving. We need to
set goals (PPS-2 Goals and Assessment) that have measurable criteria (PPS-4
Developing Criteria and Constraints), break down our task into components and
make a schedule (PPS-6 Project Planning).
Note: If
you are looking for support from your employer (books, software, time,
tuition), your learning goals should work to achieve your employer’s business
goals. (If you do not know those
business goals, both you and your employer are in a heap of trouble.)
The new
skills to develop are
Locating and Filtering Resources
To locate
and filter resources, we’ll first look at categories of written information,
the producers/publishers of information, and the collectors/cataloguers of
information. The unit includes a few
practical suggestions for information hunting.
Then we’ll present a list of filtering questions to help narrow your
choices.
Evaluating Resources
To evaluate
resources, a numerical rating system is used in an attempt to quantify resource
quality. The system rates the resource to
determine if it is
·
Authoritative
·
Quantitative
·
Unbiased
·
Thorough
This rating
scheme is most useful for novice users of information.
Learning Information (by reading)
The focus
of the learning information unit is the use of written resources. Learning physical skills, such as shooting
free throws, is not covered. The process
of learning is divided into the SQuRATR approach
Assessing Your Progress (Writing
Learning Goals)
Since the
quality of assessment depends on the measurability of the goals, some time is
spent on how to write learning goals.
Bloom’s Taxonomy is used to structure the desired type of knowledge
desired. Bloom’s Taxonomy describes
“depth” of understanding from a “read, repeat” level to a “create, critique”
level.