Learning comes in many forms, some of which are readily apparent to us and others that require our more careful attention. All around us, perhaps unseen at first inspection, are the gems of informal learning that sustain us and make us human. Let's examine these precious experiences, and explore how we can make the most of them.
What do I mean by "informal learning?" Well, you might think of it as something akin to a "self-guided tour" of a local museum. As you stroll among paintings, sculptures, and the long-forgotten artifacts, you are grateful for the absence of the irritating tour guide who interferes with your pure and simple appreciation of beauty and historical significance. You decide to stop and read the plaque under the frame. You decide whether something is a masterpiece or simply occupying space. You decide how to spend your time. Your commitment to the experience determines the shape, feel, sound, and smell of that experience. It's all in your hands.
The gems of informal learning are truly all around us: The casual hallway conversation with a colleague or customer might challenge you to take a new perspective on your relationship with that person or on your own work. Your next freeform surf session along the waves of the World Wide Web could lead you to entirely new and previously unimagined possibilities that will radically alter the way in which you think about your career as an information professional. But how do you separate the gems from the semi-precious stones?
I believe it all begins with reflection, a capability we explored in this column just a few months ago. In fact, I believe that developing and strengthening our ability to look at ourselves and reflect on our experiences may be the most important contributor to a lifetime of success. All too frequently, we substitute "thought" for "thinking," i.e., we recycle our entrenched opinions and stale points of view and try to pass them off as new ideas, rather than engaging in an authentically new journey into the phenomena we are experiencing at the time. If we cannot refresh our thinking through reflection, we will find it very difficult to benefit from the informal learning we unexpectedly encounter each day.
So if you are genuinely committed to embracing informal learning in your life, you can begin by asking yourself these important questions:
What am I experiencing? What am I feeling as I experience it?
What does this experience mean to me? What kind of impact is it making on me?
How has the meaning of this experience changed the way I look at things that are important to me?
By taking some time to reflect on these questions, I believe you will be more capable of identifying informal learning opportunities and better equipped to gain insight from them. To illustrate, let me share a quick story with you.
One of my colleagues recently spent a day out of the office working at, as he put it, "an undisclosed location," so he could get some serious work done. He did and he told me that the experience was powerful for him because he found a space for reflection that was difficult to find in our busy office. At one point during his day, he focused his attention on what looked like a small puppy running across a park. But upon closer examination, what he saw was not a puppy at all, but a plastic supermarket shopping bag being blown by the wind. My colleague summed up his informal learning in one sentence, "Once I realized that my eyes had been deceived, I began to feel that I needed to look at other things that are going on through new eyes." His experience produced a learning jewel that, for him, was the size of the Hope Diamond!
The important thing to remember is that all learning is a unique and very special treasure in our lives, and informal learning is frequently an undiscovered treasure from which we fail to benefit because we're not "looking through new eyes." So keep your eyes open and, through reflection, look for the diamonds and rubies, the sapphires and emeralds of new understanding, new opportunity and new meaning that are embedded in the vast and endless splendor of our world.
For more information, contact Shelva Suggs (ssuggs@sla.org)
RSS
Feedback form
