Free Learning

Unlike formal education there are a lot of options to access learning without spending money. The questions that might come about are what to learn and how is your learning recognised?    

Rethink

Education programs and training courses are designed to develop particular sets of skills and knowledge for people working either in the same jobs or the same related industries. Completing these courses will usually result in a formal outcome, a qualification, a piece of paper that says you have the required skills and knowledge to be able to do that job.

Assuming that we have all attended some form of compulsory education as a child, as adults our learning is different and as individuals you and I are learning all of the time. Sometimes that is structured within a formal education framework where we want to gain some skills and knowledge relatively quickly so that we can be employable within a particular industry. We all continue learning after those structured courses are finished and our skills and knowledge have been fast tracked to a point that we can successfully work with others in the same field.    

Advancement

Life-long learning, professional development, self-improvement, post graduate courses, career change, promotion, escape the 9-5. All of these terms contain a sense of further learning and recognition of the learning that you have achieved but not all of this learning will have come from formal education.

On-the-job, reading, online learning, experiences, mentor, coach, books, videos, volunteering. All of these are ways in which we learn and are often highly recommended for everyone to do regularly. These ways of learning can all be a part of a formal education program and they can also be accessed for free. Free learning relies on individuals knowing what they want to learn and purposefully going out and acquiring the knowledge and skills that they want.

Recognition

Sometimes the concern is that by using only learning that you didn’t pay for that this won’t be recognised. True, there are some workplaces that will value a recognisable qualification over free learning and there are many that will gladly work with and place a greater value on a person who recognised what they wanted, made a plan and had the motivation and commitment to follow through on that plan and gain the knowledge and skills that they wanted through non-formal learning.

In the Australian vocational education and training sector you can turn non-formal learning into a formal qualification. So if formal recognition becomes important you can be assessed against the criteria and gain a qualification without ever having attended formal education. The key requirement is that you can provide evidence of how you have gained and successfully applied the required skills and knowledge so keep a diary, a log of your learning, take photos, keep samples of your work, write a reflective journal. Whatever you choose if you want to turn non-formal learning into formal qualifications make a record of your learning journey.

Links to Free Learning

The Notion page linked below has links to a number of free learning websites.