Learning Nerd’s Diary #44
Welcome back Learning Nerds!
Paint me like one of your French girls pugs!
👀 Sneak peak
Here is what I have in store for you this week -
💭 Learning About Learning: Zero to Hundred Learning
🥜 Learning Nugget: The LxD Trifecta
🧠 Learning Heuristics: No.7: Flexibility & personalised journeys
💥 Coolest Thing I Learnt This Week:
Learn - Work - Repeat
Content Overload
Structure in Learning
🔦 Spotlight: Learning Fest
Let's jump right in!
💭 Zero to Hundred Learning
Just like products, learning also has 2 stages:
Zero to One learning
One to Hundred learning
Zero to one refers to learning something anew as opposed to one to hundred ie building on something that you already know.
Let’s unpack this further!
Zero to One learning
aka learning something from scratch
Examples:
Think learning alphabets or numbers in kindergarten - they formed the building blocks for understanding the world around you
Learning how to do a handstand for the very first time
NextLeap’s RISE fellowships - designed to teach the fundamentals of a domain like Product Management or Product Design
Zero to one learning is hard. It requires you to understand the very basics of something. It takes time and effort.
At this stage of learning, two things really help - structure and support.
Structure simply because at this point the sequence in which you're learning matters a lot. Do step 3 before 1 and you might not understand what’s going on
Support because feedback is really important to understand what’s right and what is not. There is a right way to do something and you people who are experts to guide you in that process
The biggest mistake we can make while we’re in the Zero to One learning phase is try to do it on your own - structure and support are incredibly hard to build for something you’re just starting to learn.
One to hundred learning
aka building on something you know
Examples:
After learning how to do a handstand, learning how to do a handstand push up
NextLeap’s SCALE fellowships that help professionals grow in their current role
One to hundred learning is also hard but requires a different mindset. It requires you to connect what you’re learning with things you have learnt in the past.
At this stage of learning, exploration and community become really important:
Exploration to go deeper into things that make you curious about that topic. Having the freedom & autonomy to chase your own rabbit holes goes a long way in building mastery
Community to brainstorm and learn with. Having a group of peers or mentors around you who can help you feel “I’m not alone in this” can really help you grow more
The biggest mistake at this phase? Trying to follow the cookie cutter model and learn things because they’re the status quo.
It’s like Steve jobs said, “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.”
Well, Zero to one learning is collecting dots and One to hundred learning is connecting dots. Happy dotting!
🥜 The LxD Trifecta
Every learning experience should work at the intersection of 3 things…
Constraints of the designer
Context of the subject matter
Needs of the learners
🧠 #7: Flexibility & personalised journeys
Reusing an old Learning Nugget visual for this because it’s so apt!
Flexibility & efficiency of use → Flexibility & personalised journeys
We all learn in different ways. Giving learners the flexibility on what, how and when they learn goes a long way in catering to those differences.
Every cohort of learners will have learners across a range of competencies. Some will be novices, while others might be at the intermediate stage - a good learning experience caters to both. By creating journeys for learners across different levels - you’re able to provide ‘stretch zones’ for all your learners.
Examples:
Crossfit offers scaled down and scaled up version of the same exercise - so that people at different levels can perform them
Having 2 kinds of activities as part of a course, Basic Goal & Stretch Goal - so that people who are more experienced can stretch themselves
💥 Coolest Thing I Learnt this Week
Learn - Work - Repeat
I believe that learning needs to be more than just a phase in our life. While the first ~21 years of our lives are focussed primarily on learning, learning shouldn’t stop just because we start working.
I came across this post that sums this up pretty well -
Content Overload
I laughed so much looking at this -
Structure in Learning
One of the biggest mistakes we make as adult learners - we try to navigate without any structure & intention. Lavinia, sums this up pretty well in her visual -
Here are 2 articles I have written that talk about this:
Speaking of learning charters, I have something exciting in the spotlight below!
🔦 Spotlight
I’m so excited to be speaking this week at the Learning Fest on my latest obsession - Learning Charters ⛰
Learning Fest talks about what learning means in a decentralized world — drop by if you’re keen to explore more!
Love & Learning
Until we meet next week!
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