RE: Can you teach someone how to learn?

[Jim Shaeffer <jims -at- spsi -dot- com>]

I'd like to focus on another aspect of Karen's post. 

Most of the posts, so far, assume the existence of a 
knowledgeable teacher and traditional teacher - student 
roles. 

Assume a room full of motivated people who need to teach 
themselves how a piece of software works. Assume that you, 
yourself, have no specific knowledge of the software in 
question. 

Are there guidelines, schemas or plans of action that you 
could give them on how to learn this software on their own? 
That is, are there "content-free" guidelines to becoming 
an expert?

To ask it another way, are there tricks to such self-teaching, 
and can those tricks be taught? 

> Snip from: Wade Courtney -- 
> No, you can't teach someone to learn.  People know how to 
> learn, but using methods known only to them.  The key is 
> figuring out how someone learns then learning how to teach 
> them in a way they can process information.

Wade Courtney makes an interesting point, but the point seems 
to lead to a depressing conclusion: We have all learned how to 
learn by stumbling around without guidance or technique until 
we stumbled accidentally onto something that worked for us. 

I hope there's a better approach. 

Jim Shaeffer (jims -at- spsi -dot- com)

P.S. I know that an unmotivated learner cannot be taught, while 
a motivated learner will learn despite bad teaching. 

> ---Snips of Original Message-----
> From: Karen Casemier [mailto:karen -dot- casemier -at- provia -dot- com]
> Subject: Can you teach someone how to learn?

> But is it possible to teach someone who does not currently 
> know a product how to learn it -- not teach then directly how 
> to use it, but teach the skills it takes to learn it on 
> their own?
> 


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