How do you learn?

A few years ago, I happened to be in a small shop in front of a college. It was buzzing with students who were there to buy snacks and sodas. The students would take what they want and keep money on the counter. The shopkeeper would give back the change in no time from an unorganised drawer mixed with currency bills and coins of different denominations. It was a shock for me to realise that the shopkeep was blind. How come he did such smooth transactions so swiftly in that rush hour?

It's the power of distinction. Yes, the shopkeeper could distinguish different coins and notes. The ability to differentiate things in your field of work or interest is a superpower. For example, performers segment their audience; painters can see various shades of a single colour, musicians can often hear different notes in a piece of music that we cannot. So, as a learner, how can different styles of learnings help us understand and learn better? The intention is not to label the different approaches as good or bad. It is to see through them, understand and choose the right one for a given context.?

Learning and listening are closely connected. So, let us first look at the distinctions of how we listen. From the Essentials of Theory U by Otto Scharmer, there are four types of listening.?

1. ?Downloading:?It is to listen from habit, thereby confirming your existing biases. It is to attend selectively to reinforce your current understanding of subjects.
2. Factual: To listen from outside. It is to know the details about facts. It is also to be open to getting confronted with new knowledge.
3. Empathic: To listen from 'within'. It is to understand another person's world.
4. Generative: This is to listen from the ground. It is to hold the space for something new to happen.

Based on this model, we can distinguish the different approaches to learning as below:

1. Selective Learning?(Baggage)
2. Informative Learning?(Knowledge age)
3. Transformative Learning?( Age-less, Time-less)
4. Social Learning?(Digital & Social age)

1.Selective Learning: Whatsapp University is the best place for this type of learning. Interestingly, most of it is ridiculous for many people. Yet, many of us get trapped in believing some theories based on our confirmation bias due to our conditioning. 'Downloading' listening is at play when it comes to selective learning. For example, one school friend shared how several inventions happened in his village many centuries ago, even before the science world knew about those. He had articles, charts and images to tell that story. However, there might be some truth in those stories, but most of it was created by conveniently ignoring scientific pieces of evidence.?

These theories are made based on the confirmation bias of both the teacher and the students. Once such groups come together, they create echo chambers. It is just a self-fulfilling prophecy.??Social media platforms enable such learnings.?

The below explanation of 'good explanations' by David Deutsch(Physicist) can be an excellent test to identify and see through selective learning :?

"All our knowledge of the universe consists of explanations that work. 'Good explanations' are hard to vary in the sense that changing the details would ruin the explanation. If an explanation can easily explain anything in a given field, then it actually explains nothing. For most of the history of our species, we had almost no success in creating such good explanations. Most good explanations have been generated since the Enlightenment, which began a culture of the criticism and debate of existing ideas."

Tactic: Catch every time you enter an echo chamber. Truth when believed is a lie.         

2.Informative Learning: Informative learning covers the majority of the learning landscape. It is the base for our entire education system and most of the Organisational learning.

?"Accumulation" is the central idea of this approach. To accumulate knowledge, one can memorise, record or store the information about a particular topic in the desired way. All instructional-based training and teaching facilitate sharing data from a knowledgable person to an ignorant student. A student/learner can apply the 'factual' listening to get the most out of 'informative' learning.?

Answers to the 5Ws and 1H about any topic one wants to learn are part of this approach.?

5Ws: Who, What, When, Where, Why and 1H: How

Tactic:?Choose your learning modalities:        

• Visual: Pictures, Graphs, Videos
• Auditory: Lectures, podcasts, Audiobooks
• Kinesthetic: Sports, roleplays, interpretive dance
• Tactile: Sketch-notes, Simulations, building blocks

3.Transformative Learning: By the end of the first quarter of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought almost the entire world to a complete standstill. As a result, people had to stay at home, work from home and learn from home.?

All the past data, analytics, and predictive models using advanced machine learning were of little help to predict the new workplace challenges and, most importantly, the response of the stressed workforce.?In such situations (the new normal in the VUCA world), Selective learning is dangerous, and Informative learning is helpless. Thus, a?Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous?world?requires going beyond from:

• Accumulation to Imagination
• Intent to Emergent
• Availability to Agility
• Cognition to Intuition?

In the words of Aftab Omer, "In transformative learning, the emphasis shifts from information to imagination, from intended learning to emergent learning."?

Imagination for Transformative learning is not about fantasy and pipe dreams. On the contrary, it requires a clear understanding of present reality and working towards new possibilities. It's the imagination that makes virtual learning not just possible but engaging and compelling; it is the imagination that makes boring contents of compliance & regulations interesting with gamified modules and microlearning nuggets.?

The skills acquired through Transformative learning are timeless and cause inner self-discoveries. Therefore, the weightage here is not on the IQ but rather the EQ of the learner. It is about building mental resilience and emotional stability.?

Sahana Chattopadhyay has brilliantly captured this Organizational Learning shift in the below chart :

Topics like Human Development models, Mindfulness, Sensing and Sensemaking become extremely critical in this movement.

Tactic:?Giving up the rigidity of rational, linear, logical and embracing uncertainty and ambiguity, waiting for reality to show up. Keep the enquiry on, don't conclude.?        

4.Social Learning: If I saw my Personal Learning Network (PLN) last decade, I can see it looks more like a social network. This is because the majority of my learning has happened on social collaboration platforms. So it can be Enterprise Social Network (Bluekiwi, yammer)for organisational learning or platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Coursera, edx and LinkedIn for personal & professional learning. Looking at these tools and platforms, let us not confuse social learning for social media. It is just an enabler and, if not managed well, can also take you back to "Selective Learning".??

One of the best definitions of Social Learning is as given below by Julian Stodd.

" Social Learning is about the conversations that surround both Informative and Transformative learning. It is about the wisdom of the community and the wealth of experience. Social Learning is about helping each other, building learning networks, solving problems together and sharing stories. Social Learning is that 'tacit' or 'tribal 'knowledge, and it's the things you already know, alongside what everyone you know knows."

The listening approach required for Social learning is "Generative". You "hold the space" for new things to happen. It allows room for serendipity to take place and makes co-creation an operating model. We enter the conversation with what we know and what is possible, but we come out with what we never understood and what was never possible for us alone. Blindspot becomes a hidden treasure. Social learning gets effective with these skills :

• Story-telling
• co-creation
• Open sharing?
• working out loud (WOL)
• collaborative technology
• generative listening?

Tactic:?Openness in knowledge sharing. Listening for new possibilities and to enable co-creation.?        

None of what is shared here is final. All of it is subject to your judgement with practical experience. I relate myself as a practitioner rather than an expert. Thus, I will keep identifying new distinctions and change my styles of learning. The idea is not to find a perfect approach to learning. The idea is to be open for new things to emerge and be flexible to adapt to change.?

"Learning is not the accumulation of Knowledge. Learning is movement from moment to moment." - J Krishnamurti