Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
We’re all familiar with the concept of the lifelong learner. It’s a term to encourage us to always be learning new things, even as we age and leave the workforce. Wikipedia defines it as “ongoing, voluntary, and self- motivated pursuit of learning for personal or professional reasons”.
But I came across an article on Entrepreneur recently titled “Empowering the Future: Upskilling and Reskilling Talent in the Age of Generative AI” that got me thinking about what lifelong learning means today. And maybe there are new considerations when we discuss being a lifelong learner, both as an employee as well as an individual.
Lifelong learning might have “requirements”. One of the things that struck me about the Wikipedia definition of lifelong learning is that it sounds like any subject you want to learn is fine. Just keep learning. That could be okay … to a point. Today’s technology might require us to learn about topics that were not on our “learning” list – like artificial intelligence. For example: The workforce today might benefit from learning about AI and keeping current with the topic.
Lifelong learners might find they need to “learn faster”. Sometimes when we think about lifelong learning, it’s related to topics we’ve “always wanted to learn but never had the time. We might say to ourselves, “I’ve always wanted to take a calligraphy class.” and hope we get around to it someday. But with today’s technology, we might find that the pace of new advancements is forcing us to learn faster just to keep current. Organizations that sometimes tend to push training into the background might find that they need to do even more training, so employees have the information they need to do their jobs.
Lifelong learners might have to become “flexible”. It can be confusing to try to learn too many things at the same time. Especially if they are complex topics with many facets. That being said, with the speed of technology in today’s workplaces, we might have to start learning something – shift to another topic – and then shift back. This is going to require learners to have a way to pick up where they left off in their learning process. Maybe an emphasis on note taking? It’s also going to require learning designers to consider how learners can get a quick refresher on things they had shifted away from.
Lifelong learning design will change. If the future of learning is fast-paced and flexible, that leads me to believe that learning design will be focused on shorter learning sessions that require high impact results. Instructional designers will need to update their skills for this type of design. And learners will need to prepare themselves for that style of learning. It might not be everyone’s favorite way to learn so finding ways to peacefully coexist with it could be necessary.
Whether you’re learning something for work or your personal life, being a lifelong learner is important. There are plenty of studies that show keeping our brains active matters. But it doesn’t mean that learning won’t change and that we might be forced to change with it. As lifelong learners, this is our opportunity to spend time thinking about how we like to learn and fully embracing it.
There could be times when we can learn something that we want to learn in the format that we want to learn it. Then there might be times when we must learn something because we have to and in a way we really don’t like. Now is the time to think about how we can take those less-than-ideal learning scenarios and make them into a better experience. Because not doing them might not be an option.
Image captured by Sharlyn Lauby while exploring the streets of Las Vegas, NV
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