How to Groom students as a Lifelong Learner
What would your students do in the next 10 years after university’s life? Do you still want them to stick around with you or do you want them to become success in their career. Close your eyes and let find the answer together. I guarantee you want them to let you free. YES! you don’t misunderstanding. I said you want them to let you free. No more spoon feeding after university’s life. Why? Because all of us have new babies waiting for.
This month in ITS experiment, I focus on designing a “future-facing” experiment that will allow me to consider my students’ transition to life after university. And I think my aim is to groom my students to become a lifelong learner. It’s time for them to realize that there’s a huge chaos world out there And what they’ve learned only a tip of an iceberg. The real iceberg is looking forward to them.
Why I Want My Student Become a Lifelong Learner?
Career Achievement — One of the everyone dream is to become success in their career. If they are lucky enough, they might accomplish within 1or 2 years. But what would happen, if this takes longer than they expected. If it takes time over 5 years. I can say that nearly every lesson and skills they have learned in university will be outdated. We cannot ask them to return to university and retake the course. We can not train them anymore. I could say one of the solution is a lifelong learning mindset. A lifelong learning will be an essential tool to allow them stay sharp in their career path.
How Did I Do?
You may laugh at me and think, “You must be crazy. They do not even pay attention to the class right now, how can we make them to become a lifelong learner.” Yes, you might be right. My method might not work, but at least I try.
Now let’s explore this together.
I conducted experiment with my final year students who did their internship. The reason I select this group is they are in the transition phase. They explore the world a bit and come back to study.
- Ask them about their career goal. — I ask my students to picture about themselves in the next 10 years. What would they want to be? Business owner or CEO
- Find their bread crumble — Next, I ask my students to set their milestones. (Their little bread crumbs). What do they need to do in order to achieve those goal? By breaking this in to 3 phases, 1 year plan, 3 year plan, and 5 year plan. They need to identify the outcomes of each phase. For example, if they would like to become a manager within 3 years. They need to identify skills and activities that will help them to become a manager. This might be extra training, getting certified or etc.
- Identify learning style — Each student has her/his learning style. Some students are reading, some are watching videos. I ask my students to identify their preferences in receiving new information.
What are the Outcomes?
From this experiment, I found that most of my students seem to aware the fact that all lessons they have learned in the university will be outdated soon. And this make them stay active in learning new things. The willingness in learning are developed based on their personal interest not because of the external pressure. This is good as some said that they can spend more than a week to dig deep in topic that they like. Students found that to achieve 1 milestone require many activities such as finish online course, getting certificate. One of my students explained how many books and online courses she need to learn and read before she did her internship. This make them realize that learning should not be stopped after university. Interestingly, some students they said that although the lesson will be outdated, some skills that they learned in university still useful for them. For example, time management, service mind and DISCLIPLINE.
In the near future, your final year students will leave the university. The new babies are waiting for you to groom. All of them might not be able to take all the lessons that you teach after the university, but you already handed them a key to the future of learning.
