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I work in engineering education in Canada. One of our biggest challenges is to instill the students with a desire to become "lifelong learners". This isn't just an academic ideal, either - we are required by our accrediting body to ensure that students learn to learn, and engage with learning throughout their life. This is notoriously difficult to do - how do you ensure that a student learned such things?

We often teach students to set goals. However, I'm not convinced that goal setting is the right thing to do when the purpose is to continually, gradually improve. Goals are, by definition, attainable milestones. I feel that they are useful tools, especially in the short term, of course. I set goals for myself all the time. However, setting goals for the long term (as in, lifelong) is much more nebulous.

How can I encourage my students to continually monitor their own progress in the long term, without being concerned about the "end result"?

Michael Stachowsky
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    The best engineers don't know everything they need to know to do their job. They look things up. Try explaining to your students that it is perfectly normal to look things up. Hence, it is perfectly normal to learn on the job. Better still, invite some of the best engineers to explain how they learn on the job. – user2768 Apr 24 '17 at 13:56

2 Answers2

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I think this is a very good question. Goal setting - as you mentioned - is a very useful tool to achieve milestones. The smaller the goals ("microgoals"), the more these follow the characteristics of a continuous growth curve. However, if I understand your question correctly, you might be looking more at something like "values" that you want to teach.

If lifelong learning is part of the curriculum, you face the question how to evaluate the process (?) and maybe more meaningful, how to teach something that ends up as an understanding of a useful value in the arsenal of a modern-day student. I'd suggest, the best way to achieve this is to 1) lead by example and to 2) provide further examples. Examples should come from someone whose achievements can be traced back to them learning specific new skills throughout life without which they could not have achieved what we currently perceive as their main achievement. You should by now have a few examples in mind of people in your specific niche that would be examples for this. Talk about them and how their willingness to continually grow and learn enabled them to achieve what they did. Doesn't have to take long, but should stick in students' minds.

Hope this helps!

Doc Thomas
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To be an effective lifelong learner, you need to set yourself goals that are relevant at the time. Your students can start to do that now. The goals they set for themselves need not remain static all their lives. Examples of goals for a particular point in time:

  • balance reading papers and meeting coursework deadlines;

  • skim five papers per month and read one paper per month more carefully;

  • ask an average of one question for every three talks attended.

Do you see that some of these might disappear over time, or the numbers might change?

aparente001
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