PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

This writing is based on my personal experience as a collaborator at a training and consulting firm where I currently work. I have a disorienting dilemma after I learned the meaning-making in transformative learning albeit is not comprehensive yet. Adjusting for conditions caused by the pandemic, our previous training was 5 days face to face turned to 5 days through Zoom. At this point, I have a reasonable doubt whether the participant actually got the embodied meaning or just a prestigious, yet lack of meaning, instant certification. As stated by Mezirow in his Transformative Learning theory (1991), now I feel guilt and ashamed about what I have produced based on the understanding that I have held so far. This is a self-criticism followed up by a proposed redesign.

Below is the learning agenda of 5 days, live, online management related field certification.

Pre-course

Core course

After course

Certification requirement

PROPOSED REDESIGN

Due to the lack of meaning-making aspects in the three stages of the course as described above, I made a renewal of the learning agenda by adopting Mezirow's ten stages of transformative learning. Transformative learning is defined as “the process of making a new or revised interpretation of the meaning of an experience, which guides subsequent understanding, appreciation, and action” (Mezirow, 1990, p. 1).

Proposed redesign: Pre and Core course

Proposed redesign: After course

Proposed redesign: Practitioner phase

Proposed redesign: Certification requirement

The ten phases are experienced and controlled by the learner, but there are four out of ten phases that can be facilitated, directed, or triggered by the educator to ensure those phases have occurred among the learners within the short-term certification program. 

To support students during the practitioner phase, I will keep open access for them to the recorded live sessions, peer to peer review platforms, readings, and additional aid, a Recall quiz, a weekly-updated, closed, lower-level question quiz to help learner retrieve what they have learned without anxiety because it is a learning strategy, not an assessment.

Possible occurrence and measurement

CONCLUSION

Learning as meaning-making has been an essential concept in the study of pedagogy. The emergence of technology rose ubiquitous learning that leads meaning-making activity getting more affordable to be crafted in the cloud. Through the Transformative Learning approach, a 5 days certification program may comply with five interrelated aspects of meaning-making in ubiquitous learning as taught by Cope and Kalantzis.

Meaning making activity

References:

Mezirow, J. (1991), Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning, available at: https://www.amazon.com/Transformative-Dimensions-Adult-Learning-Mezirow/dp/1555423396

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