When Covid hit, I went online like everyone else. We know that the further up the organisation you go, you can never stop learning, but I discovered both the How and the What I learned had changed.
My situation, what I needed to do to do my job, and the things and skills I needed to master to help my team were all new. When Covid started three years ago, my go-to learning sources and methods suddenly weren’t available.
I am an avid learner, so I threw myself into online learning. I invested my own money and took all sorts of certificate courses I found online. Some were great (especially in the early days), but let’s be honest, the quality and usefulness varied greatly. There were some great free ones, but I resented the time wasted on the not-so-good ones.
Ultimately, I came to resent the experience. I would share what I had learned with my family and colleagues, and they would nod their heads, but their context and needs differed from mine; I was “telling” rather than exploring, as much as my recorded teacher was to me. They couldn’t even enjoy the occasional quizzes I had to complete to keep it stimulating.
In short, online learning’s early promise of being cheap and accessible, available whenever you wanted, started to fail very quickly for me, as it did for many people. In my case, it was an important lesson.
Although it failed, it made me realise some important things.
At first, I began to reflect on my professional learning experiences, even the most modern of them. Consider the experiences most people are familiar with: Get an email, go somewhere for one or two days, and sit in a room and listen to a talking head talk about an abstract subject called leadership or something.
Now again, let me mention I consider myself an avid learner. I am not a great TV watcher; I would sooner read a good book. This led me to consider which of my recent learning experiences I had enjoyed. In my case, this is social learning — and it’s something I am so happy to see taking off more in Thailand and beyond.
It is not for everyone. Social learning is learning subjects you are interested in with people who share this interest. For me, it is a smart way to learn, as you don’t need a lot of content, but it is about your situation.
But remember, this was Covid, and we have all learned a lot since then (forgive the pun). We were all busy trying to grow our businesses and take care of our people. We physically couldn’t get together even. We couldn’t risk getting sick as we had too many responsibilities.
Even working from home, we didn’t have that much time, as so many new things needed our attention. For those of us with children, we saw their learning transformed, not always for the better. The kids tuned out from their teachers, some even downed tools with Zoom fatigue, etc.
I didn’t have an answer then, and I don’t claim to have a full one now, but I know that going back to the old ways wasn’t the answer, and neither was persevering with new ways quickly failing to deliver their promise.
However, at least there are hints of potential possibilities of how the promise of technology and experience could create something that works for us as individuals, and we could experiment with them.
In my case, I quickly realised I accelerated my learning because I had control. I could find shorter pieces of content that I (and my team) could watch in our own time, and then we could have self-facilitated explorations and think deeply about what it meant and how we would use it.
I found it was a smarter use of my time to look for a podcast where an expert would explore/discuss a subject and share experiences, which were more helpful than rewatching boxed content.
I learned more and got more done because I was in control of my investments in time and money (and many of the best ways to learn are free or near enough). I didn’t resent my time spent learning because I knew it was going to help me to do what I as an individual needed to do.
Covid was a disaster, and learning has gone far beyond my school and university days, but it showed us what is now possible and what is no longer relevant. Just like Generative AI is sweeping even new technologies and assumptions aside, the pandemic era cleared the learning field of false promises.
My learning transformed for selfish reasons, and I realised that everyone deserves the same level of selfishness in this area. By selfish, I mean it should suit me as an individual. Even if I appear hypercritical about the above learning elements, I realise they have a place. It’s just that, for me, they needed to be handled differently.
I don’t have two days to sit in a class listening to theory. However, I am happy to spend two or three hours in real time on high-impact essentials once or twice a month. I don’t want to spend three months completing an online course in bites of once a week, or a 40-hour lecture series — even if it’s free and from the best academic institutions. However, I am happy to spend 20 or 30 minutes learning essentials before I get together with my learning buddies, so our time together is spent really understanding and not just listening.
If I’m working/learning with others, I want to bring my best game, and for them to bring theirs. Speaking of which, I enjoy the input and perspectives of others. No one can know everything, and I don’t want my people to defer to me. I love to hear things from Gen Z that I have never considered, for example.
Finally, do you remember how training sessions always finished? We fill in this sheet and plan how we will use this/do things differently! Then nobody cared, and when we went back to doing the same old thing. Now I look forward to saying that I will be back to share what worked and how I failed, and instead get people’s advice and perspectives because it makes me change and learn from myself.
We all know our traditional learning systems are broken. We all know that one day AI may be our helper and tutor. In the meantime, we should all know that taking advantage of smarter opportunities is better than recreating a past that is gone, and I hope we all start to share what we learned so countries like Thailand can benefit from them.
Arinya Talerngsri is Chief Capability Officer, Managing Director, and Founder at SEAC — Southeast Asia’s Lifelong Learning Centre. She is fascinated by the challenge of transforming education for all to create better prospects for Thais and people everywhere. Reach her email at arinya_t@seasiacenter.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/arinya-talerngsri-53b81aa
