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What is learning? The dictionary definition is …
“the acquisition of knowledge or skills through study, experience, or being taught.”
For many people, however it is the “being taught” aspect that they focus on – for that is how they have been conditioned to think they learn – having spent many years of their life in a classroom with a teacher. So it is inevitable that organizations focus on training as the main way to enable people’s learning in the workplace, since this approach has evolved from the education system. And that, too, is how many managers believe their people learn at work – by undertaking training. Hence, they see the Training Department as having total responsibility for workplace learning. In other words, if they have a perceived learning problem, they generally go straight to the Training Department to ask them to create, deliver and manage the training process for them.
Training is (mostly) a highly directed approach to learning; it involves telling people what, how and when to learn – and making sure they do it by tracking their activity to monitor learning outcomes. Although we have seen an evolution in the way that training is being delivered in the workplace (primarily through the use of technology), it still, essentially, about managing that same training process. Training Departments started by providing classroom training, where people were taken away from their day job in order to train them in scheduled events – in a separate training room. And, although this approach still continues in many organizations today, others have automated the process through e-learning so that individuals no longer need to travel to training but can take online courses at their desktops.
However, long held views on what learning looks like and how it happens are changing. For the last 14 years I have been carrying out a learning tools for learning survey, and this has revealed not just the most popular tools for learning, but also some interesting features about how and why people learn today, in particular it is clear that people learn in 4 main ways that I call the 4 D’s of Learning.
- They learn through DISCOVERY – that is by finding things out themselves (mostly on the Web) through searching or serendipitous browsing. We might also refer to this as Informal learning
- They learn through DISCOURSE – that is by interacting with others (whether it be in their professional social networks (like Twitter or LinkedIn) or with their work colleagues. We can refer to that as Social learning.
- They learn from DOING the day job and from their everyday work experiences. We might refer to that as Experiential learning.
- They learn through DIDACTICS – being taught or trained – what we usually refer to as Formal Learning.
This graphic show how the 4 D’s of Learning applies to how people learn at work – and some of the activities associated with each of them.
When it comes to the tools for personal learning, the tools on is year’s Top 100 Tools for Personal Learning have been plotted on the 4 D’s graphic as below. Although in 2020 there seems to have been a shift from learning from CONTENT TO COMMUNICATION & COLLABORATION, it is still clear that modern learning is a very diverse activity and is no longer constrained to being a didactic process.
But how much do people learn from each of the 4 D’s of Learning? Where does most learning take place?
Last updated: October 14, 2020 at 15:08 pm