Transcript Lifelong Learning, Informal Learning & IT

LIFELONG LEARNING,
INFORMAL LEARNING & IT
PAMELA CARSON
WEB SERVICES LIBRARIAN
CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL
WHAT’S LIFELONG LEARNING?
• Empower people to manage their own learning in many
contexts throughout life
• Roots in John Dewey’s philosophy of progressive education
WHAT’S INFORMAL LEARNING?
• Learning situation where some combo of
•
•
•
•
Process
Location
Purpose
Content
is determined by the learner, who may (or may
not) be conscious that learning happened (Carliner, 2012)
WHY THESE TOPICS? WHY NOW?
• Knowledge economy
• knowledge workers
• I often ask myself “How does he/she know that?”
WHO ELSE IS DOING IT?
• IT workers (Gijbels et al., 2012)
• Open Source Programmers (Brown, 2008)
• Software Engineers (Enes, 2005)
• Googlers (Johnson & Senges, 2011)
HOW DO WE FOSTER IT?
Capacity building
• (McManus, 2011; Johnson & Senges, 2010)
Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory
• (Crick & Yu, 2008)
Organizational supports / Knowledge Management
• (Johnson & Senges, 2010)
HOW DO WE MEASURE IT?
Lifelong Learning Support System
• Up-front needs assessment
• Back-end evaluation
(Kraiger and Wolfson, 2011)
CRITICISMS OF LIFELONG
LEARNING
• Responsibility for education on the individual
• Tends to support status quo
• Who wants to learn forever?
(Hager, 2011)
TAKEAWAYS
For Yourself
• Recognize informal
learning
• Career plan
• Performance reviews
• Develop capacity for
lifelong learning
• Seek out informal
learning
For Your
Organization
• Use KM tools and
concepts to
encourage knowledge
sharing
• Be a lifelong learning
role model
RESEARCH PLAN
• A case study in Canadian academic libraries: Web
Services Librarians’ approaches to technology-related
lifelong learning
• Semi-structured interviews with Canadian Web Services
Librarians
• 15±10 participants
THANK YOU
[email protected]