What have I learned about myself and how I learn?

What have I learned about myself and how I learn?

The assignment to wrap up my recent class toward my degree in Instructional Design and Technology is quite thought provoking.  The class started seven weeks ago by asking us the basic question of how we learn.  At the time it was an innocent enough question and without knowing the theories we were about to study I could say anything since I did not know anything.  I tend to be a person who looks at things “outside the box” so I came up with some interesting conclusions on how I learn – even thought I might have a new theory.  After studying the theories of behaviorism, cognitive theory, constructivist theory, and connectivism I am even more confused than ever as to how I learn.

As adults I am drawn to the thought that all of these theories come into play when learning at some point and time.  I think what has happened is that I am now cognizant of these theories is all.  For example, my washer finishes its cycle and a bell rings and like Pavlov’s dog I go running to the bell as a learned behavior.  Yes, somewhere in the back of my head I knew that was what I was doing, I just did not pay attention to the theory and just did the action.

Adult learners just by the nature of their length of time on this earth have to be learning from all of the theories or we would never grow into the adults that we are today.  Sure we all have a preference to one style or another but I feel they all come into play.  My preferential style of learning is more of a meld between connectivism and constructivism which is hard for me to say because when I initially was introduced to the constructivism theory I thought it was the craziest idea.

I have come to realize that I do construct my own knowledge based on what I have learned in the past and I use my networks of interactions with others to expand on my constructs.  It is funny, I am a huge movie buff and I am big on relating things back to movies so here goes, I feel as though I am the Ferris Beuler of my world of networks.  I have so many different nodes that I interact with that would not really interact with each other normally and I get along with them all equally well.  What I mean by that is I belong to a country club – just because I love the game of golf, but I also belong to a group of motorcycle riders.  I learn many things from both groups and interact well with both groups but yet I do not think either of these groups would interact together.

Speaking of movies, let us turn for a moment to technology and the role it plays in all this learning I am doing.  All this learning would not be possible without the technology advances.  I started taking the course on my iPad so I could travel easier without having to lug around a heavy laptop.  This is one area I was wrong – not everything I had to do for my classes was able to be done on the iPad, so I had to revert back to my laptop from time to time.  When posting we needed to use the APA style for references, however I would forget the book when I would go on my trips so I pulled it up using Google instead - where would we be today without Google (or Apple or Microsoft for that matter).  I remember the day of DEC Rainbow PC computers – wow am I aging myself.  Technology plays a big role – I actually have this blog – never thought I would have one of these.  I am on Facebook, mostly because my daughter convinced me to “get on board”.  I am hooked into LinkedIn – do not go there too often but do see the merit of the site.  It is funny, I work every day with technology – I train people on technology applications but outside of work I did not want much to do with technology – I like to be unplugged from time to time but alas I do not think that will be possible for too much longer.

So to summarize – I feel that I still learn the same way I always have, I just have a lot more resources available and I can now use the appropriate theory names when describing how I learn.  One area that has been of significant resourcefulness is the social networks that I now have which I never did as a child, so that has been a big help in my learning process.