

How would you motivate people to learn on their own as an alternative to going to university? - amichail

Assignments and exams in university do provide great incentives to force people to learn things.<p>But can you provide incentives like that without a university where people do the learning on their own?
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vitaminj
Self-learning has its own problems, some that have caught me out on more
occasions than I care to admit.

I graduated with an EE degree six years ago, but over the years found myself
more and more interested in economics. I read textbooks, papers and articles,
and over time I thought I knew something about it. It was only when I went
back to uni this year to formally study for an economics degree that I
realised I knew jack. All the fundamentals and boring little details that I
used to gloss over had more signficance than I'd ever thought. I also had
access to the university resources, good instruction and a fairly rigorous
course structure. Granted I was motivated and keen to learn (sadly unlike the
bulk of the 19 year old kids there), but I gained a much more solid basis for
understanding econs than I would have had I not gone back to uni.

I'm certainly no apologist for universities and schools, but wanted to point
out that there are some issues with self-learning, namely 1) focussing only on
the interesting topics and neglecting the fundamentals, 2) unstructured
learning can be ill-directed and 3) good instruction is more efficient than
finding your own way.

~~~
arvid
True, but one needs to be very self-critical when self-learning and interact
with others (not necessarily in the formal situation).

To me, formal education is to provide the tools and knowledge necessary to
learn on one's own, outside of a formal setting. Think about it. In elementary
school, 90% of learning occurs inside the classroom. In high school, maybe
60-70%. In college, maybe 20-40%. Grad school 10-20%.

Ironically, what increases during this development is the need to interact
with others: colleagues, mentors and acting as a mentor to others.

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jey
Call me a cynic, but I think people just don't care enough to do it. I think a
lot of people go to college because they're supposed to, or to get a good job,
etc. That's not wrong or bad, but it's just not going to be conducive to self-
study.

Once/if you do care, you can set goals and keep working on it until you figure
out what works for you.

~~~
cstejerean
This is rather unfortunate. A lot of the folks that simply attend college is
because they believe they NEED it in order to get a job, be successful, etc.
While they're right to some extent (you're going to have a hard time being
lawyer with no formal education), people generally miss the point that there
are ways to make a living outside of working a boring job.

Some people are simply not meant for college and instead of being forced
through by parents, etc, they would be much better off simply dedicating four
years of their life to practicing something they enjoy.

I've met several people with no formal education background that now own a
couple of small business (nothing fancy, cellphone stores, gas stations, etc)
and make more money (and have more fun) than most folks with a college degree
at their age. It doesn't take much college to do something entrepreneurial
just the motivation to learn and the willingness to fail.

The problem is a lot of folks don't realize that is a feasible option. For the
most part everyone is force fed the same routine: "get good grades in high-
school to go to a good college and then get good grades in college to get a
good job otherwise you're screwed".

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bhewes25
Overly simple answer money. Though even if you pay them how do you know how
much they have learned? Certifications such as MCSE, CCNP, RHCE or any other
of the acronym certifications. Or in the case of the Finance industry the
CAIA, CFA, FRM, PRM, what the hell ever tests. Work well for industry specific
general information.

Another way I have found useful is give people a project a real market
driven(IE come up with such and such of a product) or some safe lab project.
Give basic guide lines and an incentive to finish and let them go at it. You
will be amazed people come up with and what they learned to finish the
project. Also always be there to help if the get stuck to give new ideas, but
never do it for them.

Yet another way keep track of what above average knowledge of a topic each
member of the organization, I assume we are talking about a company, has. Make
the list relevant to work so people do not think you are invading their
privacy and set each person up with another person who wants to learn such and
such skill or knowledge base.

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imgabe
The bottom line is you can't force somebody to learn something. Assignments
and exams compel people to temporarily memorize a list of facts or a pattern
of calculation, but they have no impact on whether someone understands the
underlying principles behind it. Without that kind of understanding they often
can't apply what they've learned in unfamiliar or superficially irrelevant
situations, or extend the knowledge on that topic when it falls short. For
example, lots of electrical engineers learn about signal processing, but only
the ones who really understood it would be able to see how it can be a useful
metaphor computer programming (as in SICP.)

In my life, I have found the things I've remembered most are the topics that
I've used to accomplish some task I wanted to accomplish. I remember how to
program because there are programs that I want to write and knowing things
like algorithms and data structures helps me do that. I hardly remember a
thing from chemistry or biology because there's nothing I want to accomplish
with that knowledge.

In the future, the greater availability of information is going to make a
traditional "well rounded education" less and less useful. Every year or so,
another newspaper article comes out decrying our education system because
students can't find (obscure country) on a map. Yes, it's great to know
things, but when was the last time you were trying to do something and you ran
into a roadblock because you didn't know which continent Mt. Everest was on or
what the longest river in the world was? What's the point of memorizing things
like that when you can look them up in 30 seconds?

The model for education should be: 1\. Find something you want to do 2\. Learn
what you need to know to do it 3\. Do it, maybe learning additional techniques
or facts along the way. Add them to the body of knowledge on the topic. 4\.
Repeat.

I guess my answer to your question is: no, you can't provide incentives like
exams and assignments without a university. The real world provides far more
effective incentives already.

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amichail
How about paying people sort of like TopCoder with its prizes? Unlike
TopCoder, you could reward most competitors.

This could turn this into something like a part-time job for high school
students.

One can imagine that computer companies would be happy to donate money for
these prizes to increase interest in CS.

Unlike TopCoder, you would have many targeted competitions (e.g., compiler
design, AI, graphics, etc.).

So unlike university where you pay to learn, here you get paid to learn.

~~~
DaniFong
It's funny, on TopCoder, prizes count for close to nothing to most of the top
competitors. More than anything, respect is what people strive for -- from
others and from themselves. People are extraordinarily excited about the
prospect of being 'red' or getting a rating above 2200, and seems to motivate
people far more than prizes.

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shawndrost
I think there is a good question at the root of this. Universities were once
the best source of information, but now they're not. However, they provide
many things that make it easier to learn (expert evaluators, like-minded
peers, social expectations) that aren't easy to find elsewhere. How can you
duplicate those benefits?

"Money" sounds like a horrible answer. "Forced learning" discussions are
missing the point (or at least discussing a different question than I am). The
answer I would expect to hear here, "join a startup", is not very user-
friendly.

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asdflkj
Assignments and exams are much less important than being around your
intellectual peers every day. If instead of going to a university, you moved
into a big house with 50 other smart, ambitious guys and a big room full of
textbooks on every topic, after 4 years you'd know at least as much as if you
had gone to a university, and probably more. You might be a little sexually
frustrated, though (edit: and socially retarded, as well).

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ruggy
Just keep raising tuition and cutting financial aid.

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ivankirigin
People that need to learn to be motivated won't be motivated enough to learn
on their own. Low standards in school and a lack of clear guidance as to the
point of it all makes people uninterested in learning. So start young, before
they've become disinterested. Focus on the ability of learning/creating to
make people truly happy and on the propensity to make people rich.

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jkush
Find out what kinds of things they'd like to do but feel they aren't capable
of doing. Then, demonstrate which things they can learn now which will get
them closer to doing the very things they can't do.

If you can convey that each thing they learn can be used as a building block
to learning things that are currently way out of their league you might have
some success.

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indrax
Very low cost exams or other verifications that results in a certificate with
publicly known high standards.

Any high schooler should be able to afford the test, but people should be
immensely impressed if they pass it.

Once they are known and respected, they become resume fodder and that leads to
money.

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davidw
I left for Italy after enough university level Italian to learn more on my
own, and fended for myself for a year. That was probably the biggest single
"learning experience" of my life, and a lot of fun to boot.

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staunch
Provide role models and mentors. Let them find a subject on their own that
they can love and be the best at amongst their social circle.

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aswanson
Ask little kids. They do it naturally.

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DanielBMarkham
People are motivated by one of two things: pleasure or fear.

I enjoy learning random stuff, but I plow through difficult computer-related
stuff for one reason: it's a fast-paced, cutthroat competitive world out
there. I need every little bit of advantage I can scrape up. I like it like
that, but I imagine most folks would find that belief to be very
uncomfortable.

So I guess the enemy of self-directed learning is contentment?

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curi
Forced learning is unreasonable. If you can't demonstrate the merits of
something, so that a student judges it would be a good idea to learn it (now),
then in what position are you to say it really should be learned?

If motivation to learn something requires external incentives, then why bother
learning it? We should learn things that are intrinsically worthwhile.

~~~
slashcom
I disagree.

"Education and religion are two things not regulated by supply and demand. The
less of either the people have, the less they want." -- Charlotte Observer,
1897

There is very much a reason that it is the law that children must go to school
until 16: we want to enforce a certain amount of education on them, otherwise
they'll think they never need it.

The difference between me and my sister is a nice anecdote. I love to learn; I
read books out the wazoo, etc. My sister, on the other hand, hates it. For the
longest time, my parents had to watch her do her homework, or she wouldn't do
it.

The thing that eventually got my sister to do her homework by herself? Getting
it through her teenage head that if she reliably does her homework, my parents
won't be on her case every 5 seconds. She's now learning, not because of
intrinsic love of it, but because of extrinsic reward: independence from my
parents.

~~~
curi
School is unpleasant. This turns people off learning. Then schools say: see?
kids don't like learning. we have to force them.

That isn't a valid argument. If pleasant, voluntary, interest-based learning
was offered, you don't know how children would react.

The same thing with your sister. the offer usually made is something like:
obey me, and do your schoolwork. it won't be fun, but when you grow up you'll
thank me later. if you don't obey, i'll hurt you.

That provides no information about how your sister, or any other child, would
have behaved if offered some better options.

~~~
slashcom
What I would like to see is more of the Socrates style teaching. I think
that's a lot like the kind of pleasant, interesting learning that you're
talking about.

I guess my question is this: if you say you're only going to teach voluntary,
interest-based things, how do you make things interesting? How do you make
math interesting to a kid who doesn't care if he knows how to add? How do you
make history interesting to a kid who thinks it's awful?

There's a lot of value to a well-rounded education. If you don't "force" kids
to explore a variety of areas, they'll have a tendency to become focused and
centered on the one thing that really gets them off. That's great, unless they
start blowing off other subjects and whatnot. It's the reason most
universities require a variety of general education classes for all freshman.

So I think we have to "force" everyone to study different topics, not just the
ones that intrinsically interest them. The key here is "forcing" the kids to
like the material. How do we do this?

Well, I don't have a great answer to that. The only thing I can point to is
that one great teacher we've all had (or I hope you've had). That one teacher
who was able to just turn you on completely. But it was the teacher that was
special, not the material, not the procedure, not the tests, not the class.

My favorite example is Mrs. Sams, my calculus teacher. When we got to the
fundamental theorem of integral calculus, we held a mock wedding between the
derivative and the integral.

~~~
leogo
"It's the reason most universities require a variety of general education
classes for all freshman."

It's a bad thing universities do for a bad reason. They waste people's time.

An individual knows best how to find their own talents. When a person knows
exactly what they want to do, as long as it's moral, that's what they should
be helped to do.

You get a well rounded education by googling when you decide you need a
question answered.

