Some courses merely transfer information. Others provide a stimulating and thought-provoking experience. Stories and scenarios belong to the second category and are excellent means to enhance learning experiences. Scenarios do help retain new information in an easy manner. When you use real life scenarios or examples, learners are able to relate it to an existing or familiar situation or fact. This helps build on their current knowledge, giving scope for knowledge transfer that has better chances of retention.

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Learning is directly linked to career growth. You need to learn lots of information to keep yourself up-to-date in your respective field. Otherwise, you face the danger of becoming outdated in a world where knowledge is so dynamic that it keeps multiplying on a daily basis.

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This month’s Big Question in The Learning Circuits “WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT LEARNING IN 2009?”

Being a Learning and Training professional, I think it a good time to take stock about our own learning about learning. Reminds me of the adage, “Physician, heal thyself”.

It is in this year that I started to participate in various online forums and social media regularly. I also started to blog on learning and training with special emphasis on learning styles and learning tools.

Year 2009 taught me that you can learn a lot by:

• Asking the right questions
• Keeping your ego at subsistence levels
• Realizing that there is so much to learn from others

I discovered that humility is the best friend of learning. Maybe that is why we learn the most, in the shortest possible time, enjoying every minute of it, when we were children. Children instinctively follow all the three of my discoveries constantly. On the other hand, I have also discovered that our ego is the greatest enemy of learning. Maybe that is why our real learning drops as we become more accomplished in life (in our own eyes).

I have also learnt what Stephen Covey enunciates – you will learn best when you learn in order to teach or teach. Not only have I learnt that I have greatly learnt by using this quality of learning, but also realized that I thoroughly enjoyed myself in the process.

The third learning I have learnt about learning is that it happens when you suspend the noise in your head. I always wondered how the great sages achieved ‘nirvana’ (enlightenment) by meditation. Not by reading or discussing, but by keeping silent in the real sense of the word – achieving tranquility outside and inside, though for a short time. I have read somewhere that the human mind contains all the wisdom of this universe and all you have to do is to connect yourself with the ‘Higher Power’ to tap into it. [I think that it is an excellent idea to include a brief period of silence and contemplation in a corporate training session ]

I would like to take this opportunity to thank and salute all my colleagues, real and virtual, in helping me discover these wonderful aspects of learning!

RK Prasad

CEO