My learnings and systems from a year of learning, in the open

1. Intro

In this last year, I've started building open learning processes inspired by Twitter, learning more about pedagogy & education, and a few other factors. I want to reflect on this experience and share some of my learnings and frameworks.

2. Definition

I define learning in the open as the act of opening up learning processes to external stakeholders, challenging the traditional system of learning in a vacuum and assessing your knowledge through a test.

In practice, this simply means that instead of learning about a topic in depth before being willing to discuss it with others, you can start sharing your thinking and learning process with a community very early on while you are still forming your thoughts, so that you are including their input from the get-go rather than after. Bringing more people into the learning process can be challenging but I've found it to be very rewarding for many disciplines.

3. Examples

In society, these are some examples of open vs closed learning processes

OPEN LEARNING PROCESS

• Sports
• Music
• Artists

CLOSED LEARNING PROCESS

• Cooking
• Sex
• Brushing your teeth

4. Pillars for Learning in the Open

1. ITERATION 👣

A critical part of learning in the open is to be willing to put out a half-baked idea into the world, and use the responses and feedback to continue iterating.

• The concept of Elaborative Rehearsal means that new information that doesn't fit our existing frameworks/knowledge (as long as the source is seen as reliable) will be more likely to stay in our long term memory as opposed to working memory (as it involves deeper processing and emotion)
  • Elaborative Rehearsal

2. COMMUNITY 🤙

Finding a community of people who can help you learn in the open is critical: there are more communities out there than ever before: Twitter, Reddit, FB groups, Substack, online communities on Slack/Discord

Project Ideas - Free Learning