What does it mean for today’s students to become “lifelong learners?”
Students who participate in challenge-based learning are not only transformed with skill-building and hands-on application. Challenge-based learners also cultivate a healthy, meaningful relationship with the process of learning itself, becoming lifelong learners with a growth mindset, an enthusiasm for learning, and future-proof skills to boot.
These are the three key elements of lifelong learning, and they can all be fostered through a challenge-based learning approach in the classroom.
1. GROWTH MINDSET
Lifelong learning emphasizes a ‘growth mindset.’
Students with a growth mindset essentially adopt an attitude of constant improvement and innovation, looking for areas of weakness within themselves and the world around them in order to innovate ways to improve.
The growth mindset allows students to feel intrinsically motivated to achieve and chase their highest potential continuously.
Traditional learning rewards only tangible achievements—good grades—but challenge-based learning flips the script and instead rewards effort. This motivates students to continuously work hard because they come to appreciate the journey, not just the destination.
Students learn that their efforts to develop themselves are worthy of praise, and, as such, they are inspired to integrate this mindset into their life, to continuously prioritize self-development.
Across various age groups in Apple’s CBL studies, students became more motivated to grow and develop their skills, especially those students who were the most unengaged in the traditional learning setting.
The growth mindset extends beyond the classroom and into everyday life and future workplaces. Companies value innovation now more than ever and thus value employees with the growth mindset to make innovation happen.
2. ENTHUSIASM FOR LEARNING
Lifelong learning is also all about the enthusiasm for learning.
Challenge-based learners foster a genuine passion for learning. Alongside their growth mindset to continuously improve, lifelong learners want to learn new things and continuously expand their skills.
Challenge-based learning encourages team members to not only learn from each other but to support each other with their learning, and to have fun doing so with hands-on activities.
This enjoyable collaborative learning experience supports individual learners with fostering an enthusiasm for learning, as they begin to positively view their failures as learning opportunities.
Researchers find that traditional learning does not inspire knowledge retention and motivation as much as challenge-based learning does.
With challenge-based learning, students form a genuine appreciation for the potential they could reach in their lives and careers with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge.
3. FUTURE-PROOF SKILLS
The last essential element of lifelong learning is future-proof skills: to be equipped with future-proof skills and to work continuously to improve and expand upon them.
Students are prepared to take on real-world challenges when they have developed real-world, future-proof skills through hands-on learning. The future of work will not be as disruptive if students are prepared with future-proof skills like digital literacy skills, problem solving, interpersonal soft skills, creativity, and communication.
Challenge-based learning emphasizes these future-proof skills, giving students a firsthand opportunity to grow their future potential—which, in turn, fuels the student’s lifelong capacity to learn.
With future-proof skills, the student is equipped to continuously learn and work hard in the ever-changing digital age—an age with continuous, unpredictable innovation and automation threatening the future of work.
WHY SHOULD STUDENTS BECOME LIFELONG LEARNERS? THE FUTURE OF WORK IS INNOVATION.
It is becoming increasingly clear that innovation is the future, and thus it is crucial for students to hone the lifelong learning attitude to assist with their continuous innovation skills.
Innovation and, subsequently, lifelong learning are the keys to exceptional organizational growth—and employers want to hire innovative lifelong learners that will propel their organization forward and maintain that growth as new challenges emerge.
Students who enter the workforce prepared to innovate and learn continuously will excel in the future of work. Their lifelong skills set and healthy attitude will allow them to solve problems with innovation for the organization’s good as a whole.
For today’s students, becoming a lifelong learner is one of the best tools to have for the future.
Researchers emphasize that educators should implement challenge-based learning to foster lifelong learning for the purpose of future economic sustainability.
With labourers working continuously to improve and learn, to keep up with influential technology, the outlook for the future of work doesn’t have to be so somber.
