A Future-ready Learner is an Autonomous Learner

Rahul, like many other students in the society, never learnt to take charge of his studies until he received a jolt in form of the failure or disappointment. The school education tries to reinforce external discipline and motivation in the learners through regular monitoring and feedback of their performance. The parents also play an important role in keeping a tab over the studies of their children in school.

But the same child as an adult, when moves on to the next stage of higher education, has to be mature enough to manage studies on his/her own. The onus of learning lies on the adult learner who along with studies need to manage other daily affairs too. The transition demands you to become an autonomous learner. 

Malcolm Knowles, who gave the theory of adult learning states that adults are self-directed and take responsibility for their decisions. Such learners who can take charge of their learning are Independent learners. An autonomous learner takes control of its learning with very less guidance from an external source and feels motivated to learn. Can you become an autonomous, independent learner? Yes, you can and you must because the 21st-century challenges demand you to become a lifelong learner.

In a fast emerging knowledge economy, the skills to learn will be the key to get employed and stay relevant in the job. Michael G. Moore says that students can learn to become more autonomous as part of the developmental process of learning. For becoming a lifelong learner, you must be an independent autonomous learner. Here, we discuss a few methods for becoming one.

Know Yourself as a Learner

Self-examine yourself to understand how you learn. How will you do that. It’s good to ask yourself if you set your learning goals or give a thought on your learning strategies. Learning goals mean what all you intend to learn from a given topic, and learning strategies include all the devices you put to use in order to achieve your learning goals. Now, that’s an easy part to understand. But, do you know that your learning goals become more achievable if you know your learning style?

Have you ever tried to explore your learning style — if you learn more with the help of the visual things like images, diagrams, and videos or you learn better by listening? Have you noticed about yourself that you need more concrete experiences like by doing things hands-on, or that you are a kind who reads and writes more to grasp things? If yes, then you’re right on point and you must have used this knowledge to optimise your learning.

Actually, based on the learning preferences, a learner may be visual, aural/auditory, kinesthetic, and read-write learners. It may however be difficult to put yourself tightly in one of these learning styles as you employ different learning styles in different contexts. We usually use a mix of learning styles.

Research shows that the more and more senses you engage while learning, the better the learning is! Besides, you may need to analyze your learning pattern, and the time which you find best for learning—if it’s morning, daytime, or evening when you find your concentration level at its peak.

Besides, you should also ask yourself the question: Do I engage in more and more reflective thought process and take conscious efforts for my learning? The answer will determine if are you an active learner or rather a passive one. If you are a passive learner, you can become an active learner by controlling what you study and how you study, devising own learning strategies, by self-monitoring and self-assessing. Try our quiz to know what type you are as a learner.

Align with Learning Process

You may wonder when learning occurs. Albert Einstein says, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. The crux is if you can express what you learned in simple words, then you have actually processed what you read. The expression is the key here, it is the litmus test of your learning.

Although learning may occur in a variety of ways apart from the books or teachers, like trial and error, discovery learning, copying or imitation, role models, learning by observation or through experience, etc., we are more concerned here with the first type which is the formal one. Of course, if you can integrate all your experiential and informal learning with your formal studies, you will strengthen your learning manifold times.

The information processing model of learning points out the importance of sensory input and learner’s attention, followed by the storage of the information in short-term memory (STM) in learning. This may further transfer to long-term memory (LTM) through rehearsals — rehearsals in form of recitations, associations, collaborative interactions, etc. The ultimate purpose of storing the information is to retrieve it whenever required. Memory cues, imagination, and visualizations come to rescue in the retrieval of the learned information.

Shift to Deep Learning Approach

The learning approach is your way of learning. It is your method of learning, the way you study a concept or a topic. In other words, your learning approach depends on whether you are interested in the topic’s gist, or you break the topic into many parts and analyze each of them separately. If you are the former type, it is the holistic approach you follow. If you feel closer to the latter, then you conform to the atomistic approach of learning. Well! Both the approaches are useful and depend mostly on the type of content you are learning.

Another interesting question is if you are a deep learner, a surface learner, or a strategic learner. A surface learner tries to rote-learn things without trying to understand how the concepts interrelate with each other. A deep learner studies a lot, analytically. A deep learner relates previous knowledge with the new knowledge and can process the information well enough to even apply it in real. Such a learner can easily come up with novel ideas regarding the topic under study.

A strategic learning approach is best suited for the exam time preparation with the sole purpose to score well. Learning scientists recommend a deep learning approach throughout the course, followed by strategic learning for exam time. Try to make connections between previous and new knowledge and think more to take a shift towards deep learning.  

Learn the Learning Skills

Learning skills are those skills which will help you in learning more efficiently and effectively. Also called study skills, we can easily learn them with practice. All students require study skills which are techniques for effective reading, note-taking, listening, collaboration, time management, etc.

Study skills require the learner to be active—how active you are in dealing with your studies, what efforts you take, whether or not you have put aside some time for self-study and charted out a study routine, etc. Active learners usually have a clutter-free study space where they only study and do nothing else. Also, you need to see if you actually comprehend the text when you read them. These kinda learners usually organise their notes for a quick revision later.

If you are doing all of the above, then you are probably using the learning skills! If not, then you may reconsider your learning pattern. For this, you may like to read my article on study skills.

These four dimensions of learning—the learner, the learning process, the learning approach, and learning skills are essential for optimizing your learning experience. Always remember that learning is a joyful process only when the learner is passionate to learn. And the passion comes from a dream. So, never stop dreaming and working hard to achieve your dreams.