Lifelong Learning

    We all know how fantastic MOOCs are and how they are almost as addictive as Kopparberg pear cider. Take a course in Animal Psychology or some outlandish course you wouldn't have touched with a barge pole when you were at uni and try and tell me that MOOCs aren't the greatest thing to hit the internet since that jumping dinosaur game on the google page.

    But why am I talking about MOOCs now? Well, the last class I did was about lifelong learning. I created a lesson based on that topic because I was getting a bit frustrated with my students moaning (is moaning the right word? ehm yeah, I think so) about how they are not getting what they expected from their university experience. Some of the complaints were:

• The low English level of the Korean professors*.
• Korean professors not being interested in the class, lack of passion. 
• Classes are a waste of time as students can't understand the professor.
• Korean professors speaking in Korean for Korean classes.

There were many more. Some of the complaints could be solved easily if the students were pro-active and engaged in their learning. For example, nothing stops the international students from previewing the next Korean language lesson and learning some of the keywords before the class. There is nothing the students nor I can do for most of the complaints. Universities are a very closed shop. Change doesn't happen quickly, if ever, to change the way their professors teach their content classes would be an almost impossible task. But it got me thinking, what can the students do to change or make their situation better? And I began thinking about how they could invest in their education.

It has always amazed me that we always wait until we are given the knowledge, especially in formal education. We shouldn't wait for a teacher or a professor to provide us with knowledge, we can be active and find the knowledge. We don't wait until somebody shows us how to operate a new device or gadget. We go out there and find the knowledge. Why don't we use the same mentality for our formal education?
With that in mind, I created a lifelong learning worksheet (attached below).
One of the activities involved getting the students to find four MOOCs they would like to take, two related to their major subject and two they are just interested in. The response was quite remarkable. The students had no idea that so much knowledge was available. I explained to them if they took one of these courses every semester for the next 4 years, that would be 8 certificates they would have from the best universities in the world.

Imagine how much knowledge they would have.

Imagine how good it would look to a potential employer.

Imagine the improvement in their English.

​It is beautiful, and it is there for them.

My class is very unique. I make the syllabus, set the assignments, and have complete freedom over everything. Next semester I will tell my students that if they enrol in a MOOC, I will accept the assignments they do for the MOOC as assignments in my class. We need to encourage our students to find the knowledge they need. As always if you need the worksheet just send me an email. 

* - My students are all international students studying a 4-year undergraduate course at a Korean university in English.

*This blog post is from 2017* As previously mentioned, I lost my login for my other blog site and I am in the process of moving the posts over to this site. If you want a copy of the worksheet just let me know. Coursera is still awesome.