Let us all agree that the con­cept of Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion has become of vital impor­tance with the emer­sion of new tech­nolo­gies that change how we receive and col­lect infor­ma­tion, col­lab­o­rate with oth­ers, and com­mu­ni­cate. Almost all of us agree that learn­ing is not easy, it is tough for every­one, you are not going nev­er to be hap­py while you are squeez­ing your brain try­ing to learn a new skill or wak­ing up too ear­ly to prac­tice some­thing you nev­er did before. How­ev­er, noth­ing is bet­ter than achiev­ing your goals and mak­ing a real dif­fer­ence in your life. Sev­er­al stud­ies have shown that the more ambi­tious goals that we plan, the hap­pi­er we are. And that is relat­ed to some fac­tors, we have list­ed some for you down here:

• Our hap­pi­ness comes from our suc­cess and is not reliant on others.
• You will sleep bet­ter! When you exer­cise your body, it gets tired; the same thing hap­pens to your mind.
• You are stay­ing chal­lenged, which keeps you focused and learning.
• You pro­tect your brain with con­tin­u­al use from dis­eases like demen­tia and Alzheimer’s.
• Con­tin­u­ous learn­ing fuels cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion.
• It gives excel­lent prob­lem-solv­ing skills.
• It makes you more valu­able as an employee.

Though, let us set a life role here:

Learn­ing nev­er ends, and it is not going to end after we throw our caps in the air dur­ing grad­u­a­tion.

We are moti­vat­ed to learn and improve con­tin­u­ous­ly, and this takes total con­trol of our over­all devel­op­ment as a per­son, and the habit of Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion is prov­ing to be essen­tial for indi­vid­u­als and employ­ees at any orga­ni­za­tion to achieve career growth.

On a personal level:

The first thing we need to think about before choos­ing which kind of con­tin­u­ous learn­ing we are going to go through is hav­ing a plan.

Personal plan for Continuing Education

Psy­chol­o­gist Dr. Car­ol Dweck in her book, argues that it’s not just our innate abil­i­ties that bring us suc­cess – it’s whether we approach work with a fixed or growth-mind­ed set. Work­ing to pro­duce a growth mind­set is also about rec­og­niz­ing that you need to take own­er­ship of your career pro­gres­sion, whether or not your orga­ni­za­tion sup­ports a learn­ing cul­ture. or you are going to go through that by your­self like to start a new career. So, then what you need to do is an assess­ment to:

• Your past skills: Is it going to count on the field you are going to go through now?. Are those skills a bit rusty? Do you need to get updat­ed? l  Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion For Student

• Your cur­rent skills: Are they ade­quate for your present posi­tion? Do they fit ade­quate­ly with your team or orga­ni­za­tion’s pri­or­i­ties, you need to sit a bit with your man­ag­er and dis­cuss that. If it is just you, so you need to think if you can use those skills ade­quate­ly, or you need to work on hav­ing a dif­fer­ent skill and career.

• Your future skills: What skills do you need to reach? It may be help­ful to test your­self with some self-assess­ment quizzes, and you can find it on almost all the resources. Think about how you com­pare with your col­leagues in terms of knowl­edge, skills, expe­ri­ence, atti­tude, and behav­iour. What does your team need that you would like to offer? Put your­self into the shoes of a cus­tomer, col­league or sup­pli­er. What would he or she want you to know, or to be able to do? Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion Strategy

Also, you can take the following approaches towards Continuing Education to build new knowledge and skills: 

• Ask­ing for help when­ev­er some­thing is unclear to you.
• Read­ing books, mag­a­zines, arti­cles, etc
• Watch­ing videos.
• Observ­ing oth­ers who are more expe­ri­enced in a spe­cif­ic area
• Learn­ing by the excel­lent old method of tri­al and error
• Prac­tic­ing and apply­ing the new skills on the job
• Ask­ing for feed­back from oth­ers and work­ing towards improvement

At an organizational level:

Employers have a vital role to play in shaping their employees and expanding their staff members’ skillsets and supporting them to develop a habit of Continuing Education. Companies can invest in:

• Off-site train­ing and team build­ing activities
• Spon­sor­ing employ­ees to attend indus­try events
• Pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment work­shops
• Sem­i­nars and talks by indus­try leaders
• Pro­grams offered by col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion For Old Age

But, to have that done you need to pre­pare by three steps:

1. Adopt a work environment that supports Continuing Education

Replace the idea of train­ing with capa­bil­i­ty devel­op­ment. That empow­ers the employ­ees to be more self-moti­vat­ed and more like­ly to want to improve them­selves. Build a cul­ture around employ­ee sat­is­fac­tion and improve­ment. Imple­ment con­tin­u­ous learn­ing into dai­ly rou­tines. Use a vari­ety of mul­ti­me­dia options to encour­age learn­ing from many dif­fer­ent aspects. Peo­ple have dif­fer­ent ways of learn­ing through audio, visu­als, text or hands-on approach. Cre­at­ing mul­ti­ple solu­tions for train­ing ensures that employ­ees can learn at their own pace, and in a man­ner, they are comfortable. 

2. Get involved with the potential educational partnerships

Mas­sive open online course (MOOCs) providers can assist employ­ees in boost­ing tech­ni­cal knowl­edge and build­ing skills. Part­ner­ing with cer­tain providers can give your com­pa­ny access to a large cat­a­logue of uni­ver­si­ty-lev­el pro­grams. Think of Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion as smooth­ing out the bumps and val­leys of your employ­ees’ learn­ing curve. A front-loaded strat­e­gy has a huge spike right at the begin­ning that demands a lot out of your employ­ees. That may harm their moti­va­tion, stress lev­els and skill pro­fi­cien­cy. Imple­ment­ing con­tin­u­ous learn­ing straight­ens this curve out.  

3. Make a clear agenda for what you are looking for from your employees

Make it clear to your employ­ees that most learn­ing hap­pens past the ini­tial train­ing. Employ­ees will be less stressed because their devel­op­ment will occur grad­u­al­ly over time, rather than be front-loaded at the start. It also makes it clear that your pri­or­i­ty is their well-being, which trans­lates into high­er work­force morale.

Last but not least

Remem­ber that there’s always some­thing to learn. Whether you’re pick­ing up a hob­by, get­ting ready to beat in your work­place or start­ing a new career, you’ll need always to have cur­rent knowl­edge and skills. And you should be eager to embrace the chal­lenge because Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion is def­i­nite­ly will be your life chang­er!