LESSON ONE (1)

Evaluate the benefits of self-managed learning to the individual and organization

Self Managed Learning or SML as its normally called is more about taking responsibility for decisions like; • What to Learn • How to Learn • When to Learn • Where to Learn.
The most fundamental questions that stimulate the above mentioned question is "Why Learn", this is where a link between personal development and organizational development could be established. So what does SML do for Individuals and what does it do for Organizations.

Benefits of self-managed learning to the individual
Starting with the individual, SML creates value for learning among individuals, • self actualisation • Learning brings a constant feeling of development among individuals and that is directly linked to being able to advance in career (job promotions) • increased job satisfaction • help them take on board their weaknesses, and how they can get over them, • it help achieve increased level of self-confidence among participants due to the ability to acquire new skills, • help creates ability to work more effectively with the colleagues. • its a place where individuals could be more open about their issues and achieve a constructive feedback and most importantly • individuals set their targets assessing their own shortcomings.

Benefits of self-managed learning to the Organisation
What does SML has to offer the Organizations, • the first and foremost is that it get the employees on the track of learning, that is the key to its survival. • it helps create a better work environment as employees learn how to work effectively with others, also resulting in low staff turnover. • learning results in increased profitability and growth in the organization. • Knowing and understanding their job better will directly result in increased job performance • enhances staff focus thus helping in achievement of goals of the business.

SML could very work be the key to successful organizations, but management must make sure they help their employees understand the need of continuous learning and the need for self-direction in adult learning.

What is “knowledge society”?
The people of today and of tomorrow have to; o process more information o cope with social developments and critical situations o make more decisions

Self-managed learning becomes a central issue in the “knowledge society”
With "self-managed learning" a learning is understood, "in which the learner steers in essence his/her own learning process" (Dohmen, 1997) and that he/she decides to a large degree alone if, what and when, how and with which goal he/she learns.

The four necessary prerequisites for self-managed learning (key qualifications) 1. the ability for life-long learning in the way of disposing over formal strategies of learning to cope with new learning demands 2. the ability to place the learn process in social contexts as a basic prerequisite for an active participation in forming our world 3. the ability to acquire orientation knowledge of larger thematic contexts 4. the ability to acquire detailed knowledge in selected areas in the way of deepening individual thematic contexts (Stadelhofer, 1999)

The meeting of informal and formal education
Educational and learning processes encompass all life spheres of people.

Informal education as "situation-related experience learning" and formal education as "systematic learning" (Dohmen, 1997) are both closely related.

Self-managed learning includes application of experience learning and informal learning.

GOALS

Clear goal setting, eg aims and requirements, personal orientation achievement goals, dates for achievement, self-reflection

Research on successful top managers and leaders shows that they set clear goals for themselves in relation to their learning. It is not purely random. They establish;

• personal orientation achievement goals, • dates for achievement, • self-reflection • self-initiation of learning processes;

PERSONAL GOAL SETTING

According to Mind Tools

“Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn your vision of this future into reality. The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You'll also quickly spot the distractions that can, so easily, lead you astray.
Why Set Goals?
Goal setting is used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge, and helps you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.
By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and you'll see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. You will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your own ability and competence in achieving the goals that you've set.
Starting to Set Personal Goals
You set your goals on a number of levels:
First you create your "big picture" of what you want to do with your life (or over, say, the next 10 years), and identify the large-scale goals that you want to achieve.
Then, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit to reach your lifetime goals.
Finally, once you have your plan, you start working on it to achieve these goals.
This is why we start the process of goal setting by looking at your lifetime goals. Then, we work down to the things that you can do in, say, the next five years, then next year, next month, next week, and today, to start moving towards them.
Step 1: Setting Lifetime Goals
The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or at least, by a significant and distant age in the future). Setting lifetime goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.
To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of the following categories (or in other categories of your own, where these are important to you): 1. Career - What level do you want to reach in your career, or what do you want to achieve? 2. Financial - How much do you want to earn, by what stage? How is this related to your career goals? 3. Education - Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to have in order to achieve other goals? 4. Family - Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family? 5. Artistic - Do you want to achieve any artistic goals? 6. Attitude - Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? (If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.) 7. Physical - Are there any athletic goals that you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this? 8. Pleasure - How do you want to enjoy yourself? (You should ensure that some of your life is for you!) 9. Public Service - Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
Spend some time brainstorming these things, and then select one or more goals in each category that best reflect what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals that you can focus on.
As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want. (If you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants - however, make sure that you also remain true to yourself!)
Tip: Personal Mission Statements. Crafting a personal mission statement can help bring your most important goals into sharp focus.
Step 2: Setting Smaller Goals 1. Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a five-year plan of smaller goals that you need to complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. 2. Then create a one-year plan, six-month plan, and a one-month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan. 3. Then create a daily To-Do List of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals. At an early stage, your smaller goals might be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your higher level goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting. 4. Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.
Staying on Course
Once you've decided on your first set of goals, keep the processes going by reviewing and updating your To-Do List on a daily basis.
Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience. (A good way of doing this is to schedule regular, repeating reviews using a computer-based diary.)
SMART Goals
A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants (some of which we've included in parenthesis), SMART usually stands for: • S - Specific (or Significant). • M - Measurable (or Meaningful). • A - Attainable (or Action-Oriented). • R - Relevant (or Rewarding). • T - Time-bound (or Trackable).
For example, instead of having "To sail around the world" as a goal, it's more powerful to say "To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2015." Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!

Further Goal Setting Tips
The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective, achievable goals:
State each goal as a positive statement - Express your goals positively – "Execute this technique well" is a much better goal than "Don't make this stupid mistake."
Be precise: Set precise goals, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you'll know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
Set priorities - When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by having too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
Write goals down - This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
Keep operational goals small - Keep the low-level goals that you're working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward.
Set performance goals, not outcome goals - You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. It can be quite dispiriting to fail to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control! In business, these reasons could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In sport, they could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals, and draw satisfaction from them.
Set realistic goals - It's important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (for example, employers, parents, media, or society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions.
Achieving Goals
It's also possible to set goals that are too difficult because you might not appreciate either the obstacles in the way, or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance.

When you've achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress that you've made towards other goals.
If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately. All of this helps you build the self-confidence you deserve.
With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans: • If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goal harder. • If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goal a little easier. • If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so. • If you noticed a deficit in your skills despite achieving the goal, decide whether to set goals to fix this.

Feed lessons learned back into your goal setting. Remember too that your goals will change as time goes on. Adjust them regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience, and if goals do not hold any attraction any longer, consider letting them go.

Goal Setting Example
For her New Year's Resolution, Susan has decided to think about what she really wants to do with her life.

Her lifetime goals are as follows:

❖ Career - "To be managing editor of the magazine that I work for." ❖ Artistic - "To keep working on my illustration skills. Ultimately I want to have my own show in our downtown gallery." ❖ Physical - "To run a marathon."

Now that Susan has listed her lifetime goals, she then breaks down each one into smaller, more manageable goals.

Let's take a closer look at how she might break down her lifetime career goal - becoming managing editor of her magazine:

❖ Five-year goal: "Become deputy editor." ❖ One-year goal: "Volunteer for projects that the current Managing Editor is heading up." ❖ Six-month goal: "Go back to school and finish my journalism degree." ❖ One-month goal: "Talk to the current managing editor to determine what skills are needed to do the job." ❖ One-week goal: "Book the meeting with the Managing Editor."

As you can see from this example, breaking big goals down into smaller, more manageable goals makes it far easier to see how the goal will get accomplished”.

Coaching and Mentoring

Mentoring
"Mentoring is to support and encourage people to manage their own learning in order that they may maximise their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance and become the person they want to be." (Mentorset,(n.d.) quoting Eric Parsloe, The Oxford School of Coaching & Mentoring)

According to MentorSet

“Mentoring is a powerful personal development and empowerment tool. It is an effective way of helping people to progress in their careers and is becoming increasing popular as its potential is realised. It is a partnership between two people (mentor and mentee) normally working in a similar field or sharing similar experiences. It is a helpful relationship based upon mutual trust and respect.
A mentor is a guide who can help the mentee to find the right direction and who can help them to develop solutions to career issues. Mentors rely upon having had similar experiences to gain an empathy with the mentee and an understanding of their issues. Mentoring provides the mentee with an opportunity to think about career options and progress.

A mentor should help the mentee to believe in herself and boost her confidence. A mentor should ask questions and challenge, while providing guidance and encouragement. Mentoring allows the mentee to explore new ideas in confidence. It is a chance to look more closely at yourself, your issues, opportunities and what you want in life. Mentoring is about becoming more self aware, taking responsibility for your life and directing your life in the direction you decide, rather than leaving it to chance.”

Coaching
Effective Coaching in the Workplace

Prysdale Partners, describes the need for Effective Coaching in the Workplace. They write;

“The term coaching has been around in business for much of the last decade, and yet still has varied interpretations. Simply defined, coaching is one person guiding another through a process, leading to performance enhancement. The applications can vary… support to achieve a specific project, helping an individual to do better what they already do well, or developing a skill they don't yet possess.

What is Coaching?
Coaching focuses on future possibilities and utilises learning from past experiences. Coaching is more about how things are done, rather than what things are done. It is about unlocking a person's potential and maximising their performance. It is about helping people to discover answers for themselves rather than advising.

Coaching works on resolving problems below the level where they occur. For example, beliefs and values drive behaviours and beliefs and values come from our identity. Therefore, working with a problem that manifests itself at the level of behaviour, means the coach working with you at the level of beliefs and values. It is like peeling away the top layers of an onion to discover that the problem lies at the core. Coaching done well is about working at the core, which resolves not only the presenting problem but also problems which at the time are not even manifesting themselves yet.

Coaching is about building a relationship which is based on choices rather than advice. For Prydale, coaching is holistic, it takes into account the whole person and the complete range of issues which require resolution or improvement. Coaching is a way of thinking, a way of being, and a way of accelerating development.

Why should organisations use coaching?
Coaching is a lever for unleashing potential! A tool for unlocking performance! An approach to change! It can be used to enhance the performance of the coachees beyond their dreams. Once that performance is unleashed, that automatically means change in thinking, doing and acting.

Many successful companies today are going through continuous change, which results in greater ownership for employees. They take responsibility for their own functions, which opens their thinking to new and more effective ways of working. In companies such as IBM and Federal Express, for example, coaching supports new thinking, which leads to a continuous improvement change process.

Focused coaching can and does improve performance in individuals, teams and the organisation itself. Over the last three years there has been widespread growth of interest in one to one coaching, with individuals recognising the benefits that this approach can bring to their own performance and success.

When can coaching be used?
Taking into account the philosophies outlined above, coaching can be used in many situations, including: • Motivating staff • Building teams • Performance enhancement • Building relationships • Resolving personal issues • Developing individuals • Accelerating/enhancing learning”

Self-Evaluation

The following is an excerpt from NDT Resource Centre

“In order to become lifelong learners, students need to learn the importance of self-evaluation. They can do this by filling out self-evaluation forms, journalizing, taking tests, writing revisions of work, asking questions, and through discussions. When students evaluate themselves, they are assessing what they know, do not know, and what they would like to know. They begin to recognize their own strengths and weaknesses. They become more familiar with their own beliefs, and possibly their misconceptions. After they self-evaluate they will be able to set goals that they feel they can attain with the new knowledge they have about themselves.

Teachers should encourage self-evaluation because self-assessment makes the students active participants in their education (Sloan, 1996). There are a variety of ways for teachers to provide the students with self-assessments. Research suggests that the simplest tools to encourage student self-assessment are evaluative questions that force students to think about their work (Hart, 1999). Some examples of these questions include the following:

How much time and effort did you put into this?

What do you think your strengths and weaknesses were in this assignment?

How could you improve your assignment?

What are the most valuable things you learned from this assignment?

It is important for teachers to model self-assessment too. Teachers need to show their students that it is important for everybody to self-evaluate by doing their own self-evaluations. One thing teachers can do is to ask their students for feedback on how the class is going and what the teacher is doing well and not so well. In this way the teacher is showing that they want to make improvements where needed. Teachers could put up a suggestion box, and they can hand out evaluation forms at different times of the year. This shows the students that continuous improvement is important.”

Assessing Your Skills

What Makes You Different from All the Others?

According to Carole Martin, Monster Contributing Writer,

“Gina had recently been laid off after working as a marketing manger in a high tech company for the past five years. She was distracted as she walked through the aisles of the supermarket. She was thinking about ways to market herself into a new job. She stood in front of the cereal selection, overwhelmed by the number of brands to choose from -- more than 100 varieties.

Suddenly, it dawned on her: This must be what it's like for hiring managers to look at all those resumes received in answer to ads and postings. How do they choose? What do they look for? How does one get selected? How can I make my product stand out?

The Packaging

The packaging on the cereal box is certainly the start. Eye-catching colors and descriptive words will draw attention -- low fat, energy boosting, added vitamins -- all the things consumers are looking for. But what are employers looking for? The words you choose will be key. Using words that will interest the companies will grab their attention.

The Ingredients

The list of ingredients -- the skills you have to offer -- is also important. Gina couldn't wait to get home and write down her skills and what made her unique to the position. She had a new slant to explore.

She remembered reading in a book that skills can be grouped into three categories:

• Skills learned through past experience and education (knowledge-based skills). • Skills you bring with you to any job (transferable or portable skills). • Personal traits, the things that make you who you are.

The Assessment Tool

Gina divided a piece of paper into three columns and labeled them with "previous experience," "portable skills" and "personality," the three P's of Marketing.

In the "previous experience" column she wrote:

• Marketing knowledge • Communications skills • Vendor management • Press and industry relations • Web channel marketing • Product Development • Computer Skills

Under "portable skills" she wrote:

• Customer focus • Communications • Writing skills • Very organized • Good at coordinating • Team Leader • Problem solving • Project Management • Excellent follow-through • Good with budgets and numbers • Time management

In the "personality column" she wrote:

• Self-starter • Independent • Friendly • Well-organized • Quick learner • Good judgment • Good attitude • Creative • Analytical • Flexible • Good sense of humor • Goal-directed

When she was finished, she sat back and checked the list over. She was surprised at how easily the list had come together. By dividing the skills, the task became manageable. Trying to look at everything at once is like looking at those cereal boxes.

Getting words on paper is one of the most difficult steps of putting your "ingredients" list together. This is a good exercise for anyone beginning the search process, or as a periodic check or inventory. Gina can now use the list to put together her resume, write a summary statement or compose a personal statement. The skills will be the foundation of the strategy she will use to sell herself. She still has some work to do before she can take her product to market, but she certainly has made a good start.”

Personal and key skills: self-assessment

“Personal and key skills can be seen as the building blocks that underpin your learning in different situations and that allow you to adapt and apply what you’ve learned to other contexts. We all possess such skills – but it’s inevitable that some will be more in evidence than others. “

Click on the link below and have a go at this audit to identify where your strengths and weaknesses lie, and to help you identify where you give to justify your rating?

REFERENCES

http://www.gemeinsamlernen.de/solill/Methoden/selfmanaged_html2ca0.html?language=en&part=2

http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/encyclopedia/Con-Cos/Continuing-Education.html#ixzz2MeglWnlD

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/media/level1/academicserviceswebsite/studentandstaffdevelopment/documents/pdp/Personal_and_Key_Skills_Self_Assessment_Audit.pdf
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