Below I describe three learning experiences from various points in my life that stand out in my memory:
Middle School Learning Experience
One assignment that I remember very well from middle school is from a social studies class. We were learning about current events in US politics and the teacher wanted to teach us about the 2008 presidential election. In order to do this, the teacher split our class in half and assigned each group one of the two main candidates. We all had to research our assigned candidate and then the teacher held a mock presidential debate where people in each group had to discuss major issues from the point of view of their candidate. This really stood out to me as an effective way to teach us that content.
College Learning Experience
A learning experience that stands out to me from college is actually one that I ended participating in for multiple classes. It was used by the professor for a course called Introduction to Teaching Technology Education and another professor for a course called Technical Writing. In both cases we were learning how to write detailed instructions. The way the assignment works is that you have to write very specific instructions for how to complete a task and then the professor follows your instructions in front of the class in order to see if they were detailed enough for them to complete the task. The professor for the Intro to Teaching Tech Ed course actually asked us to create instructions for our ideal ice cream sundae and then she made sundaes for everyone based on their instructions so that we could eat the results of the assignment. But if you missed a critical step like taking the lid off of the ice cream container, then your sundae might not turn out the way you expected. This assignment really helped reinforce the amount of detail that is necessary to create quality instructions.
Professional Learning Experience
I currently work for a company called Healthcare Software (HCS) as a Front End Web Developer. It is my first job out of college and I have been working there for just over a year. My company relies very heavily on self-learning when it comes time for us to learn a topic that we are unfamiliar with. Then after we learn the new topic, we hold what we call Lunch and Learns where the company orders lunch for our team and then whichever team member just learned a new skill teaches it to the rest of the team. We recently decide that we want to implement automated testing for our application and since I was assigned that project I have had to teach myself all about automated testing. I know I learn best by doing, so I watched a couple basic tutorials to help me get started and then I pulled up the documentation for the testing framework and started writing tests while referring to the documentation as a guide. This helped me become familiar with the testing framework and start developing tests quickly. I think the learning was effective in this situation because, since I was the teacher and I know how I learn best, I was able to cater the learning specifically to me. And of course, online forums such as Stack Overflow were extremely helpful as part of the process as well.