Some years ago, while conducting a lecture-cum workshop at IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Kanpur, my co-presenter and I were rather pleasantly surprised by the level of awareness of the audience we were addressing. There were questions not just about the subject we covered but also how it could be applied in different contexts. Attendants also articulated some of the surmountable and insurmountable challenges for the subject we were dealing with. We came back not just with the satisfaction of making our audience learn but a few clear areas we had to think about to develop our idea further.
Looking back, I was just wondering what was really happening in that session. Was it a case of a few students generally playing smart who had looked up the web before they joined our session. It was not possible because, these students of Engineering and technology of a reputed institution like IIT will not come and spend a couple of hours on something they could satisfactorily learn over the Web. Were they trying to show us our place that we were not the expert we thought we were? No, they had nothing against us since they didn’t know us at all and there was no occasion for it. Was this session part of their program of study that they must attend? Negative!
So again what was happening there?
It seems those who wish to learn are changing with time. While the educational theorists would decide what is at work here. But as an observer of how learning has changed in the last 12-15 years, I can say with full conviction that learners are more and more in control of their learning. They are motivated enough to figure out what they need to learn and expedite (or shall I say search) where they can get the learning. What technology (Internet, Enterprise 2.0, and Social Computing etc.) has done is to make it easy for them to express themselves without inhibition or without any other restriction (Wiki, Blog, Tweet etc.). They can organize their knowledge within their own social spaces, networks and ecosystems and explore the reservoir of the world for information and knowledge as well as for people who can guide them. It seems everyone who knows something is instantly putting their knowledge, insights into public domain and make it accessible for everyone else to explore.
I am not sure if I am coining a new term here but it seems we are graduating from being learners to “learnists”.
S M Nafay Kumail (pictured above) is co-founder, Kreeo (www.kreeo.com), an Enterprise 2.0 technology company & co-author of ‘e-Learning: An Expression of the Knowledge Economy’ (Tata-McGraw-Hill).