- BrainApps – Revolutionizing Self-Growth for Career development and Soft Skills Enhancement
- The Traditional View: Everyone Needs to Improve Their Skills
- The Online Course View: Expanding Your Horizons
- Which is Right: Traditional Pedagogy or Online Courses?
- Coaching for Every Profession
- The Importance of Self-Improvement in career development
- The Importance of Online Courses: Overcoming Blind Spots
- Online Education vs Traditional Pedagogy: Which is Better for Career Development?
- Coaching for Career Development: How Online Courses Can Transform Your Professional Life
BrainApps – Revolutionizing Self-Growth for Career development and Soft Skills Enhancement
The Traditional View: Everyone Needs to Improve Their Skills
In every profession, improvement is a crucial component. Nobody is born an expert, and no one can say they have nothing more to learn. Professionals who seek to enhance their knowledge and sharpen their skills continually are more successful in their careers. The traditional view of self-improvement states that everyone needs growth in their skills, no matter how good they already are.
The Online Course View: Expanding Your Horizons
Despite being knowledgeable in their areas of expertise, even experts have areas where they have blind spots. These blind spots are usually the cause of lack of improvement and professional plateau. Atul Gawande, an experienced surgeon, hit a plateau in his career after five years of practice. His complication rates, which had continuously dropped, began to stall, and improvements stopped altogether. In his quest to find a way out of this plateau, he realized that being an expert doesn’t protect one from having blind spots and the need for continuous learning. According to him, the antidote to blind spots is online coaching.
Which is Right: Traditional Pedagogy or Online Courses?
There is no correct answer to this question, as each person learns differently. While traditional pedagogy is focused on classroom learning and involves engaging with a teacher or mentor through a physical medium, online courses offer flexibility and accessibility to study at one’s own pace. It is also essential to note that online courses offer some unique advantages, such as the availability of study materials, interaction with other students, and various learning formats. But ultimately, it is a personal decision that determines whether online courses or traditional pedagogy is suitable for one’s career advancement.
Coaching for Every Profession
Mentors and coaches play an important role in providing guidance and improving performances. While some professions may have an in-house coach, it is still essential to seek external coaching to improve one’s skills and expand their horizons. A self-growth app like BrainApps can provide an avenue for professionals to access coaching and mentorship at any time, in any location. With the right coaching and self-learning tools, every professional can achieve success and improve their soft skills, no matter their industry or background.
The Importance of Self-Improvement in career development
When it comes to career development, two views are typically held on how professionals can improve their skills. The first view is the traditional pedagogical view, which believes that once experts have completed their rigorous education programs, they do not require any further instructions. This view is prevalent among lawyers, doctors, and other professions which demand continuous education development.
According to renowned doctor, writer, and researcher, Atul Gawande, “Expertise is thought to be not a static condition but one that doctors must build and sustain for themselves.” This view emphasizes the importance of lifelong learning and self-improvement.
In the music industry, the legendary instructor Dorothy DeLay trained her students, including acclaimed violinist Itzhak Perlman, to not just play the violin, but to learn in ways that transfer to other contexts, paving the way for self-improvement beyond the classroom.
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Although the traditional pedagogical model remains widespread, the rise of online courses has paved the way for a new model in virtually every professional and creative pursuit. This alternate approach highlights the importance of continuous self-improvement for staying current in an ever-changing world.
The Importance of Online Courses: Overcoming Blind Spots
In today’s world, everyone needs online courses to improve their skills and career, even the best performers in their respective fields. As Gawande explains, many professions – such as sports – view the teaching model as naive and believe that external guidance is necessary for self-perfection. A great example of this is in professional American football, where Yale consistently beat Harvard after they hired a coach, while Harvard did not, for several decades.
Online courses are not just limited to sports; many successful individuals in various fields have taken advantage of them to enhance their abilities. Renowned athletes such as Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams, sprinter Usain Bolt, and Muhammad Ali all pursued online courses to improve their game. However, despite the ubiquity of online courses in some professions, they remain rare in others.
For instance, Gawande highlights that with surgery, it may seem absurd to pay someone to provide guidance in your operating room, and he has mixed opinions on this. Yet, he also notes that no senior colleague had ever come to observe him in eight years of his surgical practice. From this, it’s clear that there are potentially harmful blind spots in various professions that can limit growth and progression. Therefore, taking online courses is essential to overcoming these blind spots, improving one’s skills and advancing their career.
Online Education vs Traditional Pedagogy: Which is Better for Career Development?
When it comes to career and personal development, individuals often face a dilemma of choosing between traditional pedagogy and online education. While traditional pedagogy promotes the idea that experts can improve themselves, online education believes that every expert needs coaching to improve. So, which of these models is right for career development?
Renowned surgeon and writer Atul Gawande decided to explore this question by speaking to different experts. In an interview, Itzhak Perlman, a violinist, revealed that he was lucky to have access to an online course throughout his career. His wife, Toby Perlman, also a classical violinist, acted as his dedicated online coach for decades. She would attend his performances and provide notes on where he could improve. Perlman admitted that the great challenge in performing is listening to yourself, which interferes with your accuracy of listening. While physicality can obstruct accuracy, an online coach can help highlight areas for improvement, including small details that may go unnoticed, such as the snugness of socks.
- “Details create success,” John Wooden, the famous basketball coach at UCLA, would say. For instance, wrinkle-free socks are essential to prevent blisters.
Therefore, it’s clear that online education and traditional pedagogy can coexist and play complementary roles in career development. Both emphasize the importance of learning from experts but provide different paths to achieve success. Ultimately, in today’s fast-paced world, having access to an online coach can be highly beneficial for upskilling and remaining competitive in the job market.
Coaching for Career Development: How Online Courses Can Transform Your Professional Life
Many people believe that coaching, particularly online courses, is only necessary for high-performance jobs like football or music. However, professionals of all levels can benefit from coaching. Surgeon Atul Gawande tested online courses in his surgery practice to overcome a performance plateau which was ultimately transformative for him.
Gawande realized that he had more to learn from his mentor in a 20-minute observation and discussion than in the last five years of his practice. His mentor’s fresh perspective provided insights into the little things that matter– like elbow positioning and lighting. Online courses broke down the most basic skills and helped Gawande build them back up again. His experience inspired him to extend online courses to other fields and improve the neonatal mortality rate of birthing centers in India.
In Gawande’s work with Ariadne Labs, he discovered the effectiveness of online courses in improving healthcare activities among staff, beyond traditional checklists. When the team added online courses, the group showed remarkable growth and a clear improvement in achieving basic medical practices. Researchers agree- online courses are an effective tool for professionals in all fields. In fact, studies on teacher’s training showed teachers who used online courses were more likely to implement new skills than those who were trained via traditional methods.
Sales professionals have also experienced a significant impact on their career development via online coaching, according to Harvard Business Review. IBM Millennial Corps also reveals that among the top three factors in improving millennials’ experience at work is online courses.
Coaching can transform professionals at all levels, allowing them to be the best at their job and beyond. By leveraging online courses, everyone can learn and grow, whether they are already high-performing individuals or are simply looking to improve their professional skills.
