Remo Aguilar
There’s no denying learning changed a lot this COVID-19 pandemic. The impact of this pandemic has gone deep and wide into our everyday life. We never had “enough” time to contemplate a learning strategy and measurement for our personal, career and academic life. As one doctor academician said:
“the struggle is real and frustrations borders depression! As if, I’m learning backwards!”
Learning and learning measurement awareness were already limited to “formal” schools even pre pandemic. We rarely stopped for a moment and asked ourselves ” Am I learning from this experience?”, as if learning is something subconscious and automatic for us. We never bothered to check if we are indeed learning. It was never a habit or behavior in the first place!
Pandemic changed all that and now there is an ongoing debate as to the best learning methods and measurement during pandemic. I asked these same questions at the start of this pandemic and got good responses from #HealthXPh chat. Understandably, we were in darkness that time, experimenting this or that in the hope we stumble at something concrete and effective while fighting COVID at the same time. One year into this pandemic, we have learned much about COVID-19 and have tried several learning strategies but have yet to get a clearer picture of ending this pandemic or the learning strategy that should works best for this new normal. Many hoped for a return to pre pandemic learning status quo simply because that’s what we’re good at. That is yet to be seen though. This is the topic of our upcoming tweetchat and twitter Spaces discussions this saturday May 15, 2021 at 9PM Manila time.
T1. What personal learning methods have you used since the start of this pandemic?
Self directed learning. While many of my pandemic education still relies heavily on the cadence of the formal academic institutions, most of my learning strategy now is really self directed. Many of the learning objectives I set during this pandemic stem from external inputs of formal academe, a lot of teaching learning activities I do are a hodgepodge of strategies from everywhere-personal, friends, parent, best friends, social media, books etc. Lately for example, I embarked on trying to learn how to weld metals and construct a simple flower base stand. Before you have to go to technical school for this so you dont get electrocuted. Now, after watching a youtube video or two, I went directly trying it out. without a mentor or a teacher. Social media also a played a big chunk of my education feed and source. Not because all that it produce are valid or accurate, but i have learned the hard way of discriminating which ones are fakes or validated accurate. Vaccine information for example couldn’t have reached me fast if not for social media.
T2. How do you determine the best strategy that worked best for you?
In academe we talk about models for measuring if the learner “learned’ something. Bloom’s taxonomy and Kirkpatrick Models are the more familiar ones. Personally I like the Kirkpatrick model for personal learning. The endpoint I’m usually looking for is the formation of new behaviors (3rd level) or best if i get actual results from these learning (4th level). A very common example here is handwashing and mask wearing. The simple learning objective here is to make handwashing and mask wearing a habit and the 4th level results should be prevention of COVID transmission.
T3. What proved to be least/ most effective learning strategy?
I am not saying I do not learn from webinars or online presentations, because I do. The learning I get in this mode is tiny in comparison to the volume of information bombarded to me in all online presentations. I still learned dancing from actually dancing than just watching someone dance on youtube. In other words, learn best applying, incorporating or having a “hands on” experience. In my case a surgeon, I learn more about new ways of mending bones by actually cutting and practicing on sawbones given the limited exposure to cases we have during this pandemic. On a personal level thus, I could learn better if vaccines works by actually taking one and not just listening or debating lengthily on social media if it works.
Learning is always personal to me, be it in academe, career or personal life. The context and environment may change but the overall governing principles are the same. We continue to learn because we wanted to adapt, to exist, to survive and above all make an impact whatever the context we have.
Join #HealthXPh and tweet Spaces discussion this May 15, 2021 at 9PM Manila time as we discuss how we learn in the new normal. These are our guide questions.
- T1. What personal learning methods have you used since the start of this pandemic?
- T2. How do you determine the best strategy that worked best for you?
- T3. What proved to be least/ most effective learning strategy?
