For Life
31 Aug 2017
Lifelong learning says it all. It’s learning no matter what age you are, no matter where you are in life, no matter what you are doing with you life. As an engineer, lifelong learning is a must. This paper explores why as an engineering if lifelong learning a must. There are opportunities that specify to lifelong learning that can help one be a lifelong learner no matter they are an undergraduate like me or someone in the professional field. Learning is for life and being an engineer brings the life to the learning.
Lifelong learning is important to everyone but especially to professionals in the technology fields because of it’s rapid change over time. It is important for an engineer, who most likely will have a career span of over three or four decades to continue learning and developing skills as well as knowledge to what is relevant. This is especially so because it is quite common for an engineer’s professional role to change over time from say a design engineer to management or sales.
From the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization: World Education Forum 2015, says that “Every person, at every stage of their life should have lifelong learning opportunities to acquire the knowledge and skills they need to fulfil their aspirations and contribute to their societies.” Lifelong learning to me is exactly that. No matter what age we are, old or young, we continue learning. Learning does not stop after we get our bachelor’s degrees as engineers. We continue learning, we start applying what we learn in school to our jobs and learn what we need in order to fulfill all requirements of our jobs. But even after we retire, learning doesn’t stop there, there will be things we don’t know and things we want to know that will keep up from giving up on learning. Learning is a lifelong skill. Lifelong learning is basically not stopping in learning. As an engineer, technology is our biggest ally, it helps us in many ways, but it can also hurt us in many ways. Technology changes every year. It actually changes everyday. As engineers it is very important for us to continue to learn new things, not only for our benefit, but the benefit of consumers.
There are many ways in which my career can also benefit from lifelong learning. A learning process that is called Technology Enhanced Learning is described as a process that encourage users to input their personalized experiences that they have gathered throughout their time in professional practice. This way the learning becomes you and you will be able to analyze your strength and weaknesses. This will benefit us in the work field when we know what our strengths and weaknesses are because we are able to put ourselves in the best possible career choice for ourselves. Lifelong learning also helps build a strong career background for me. It also shows my employers that I take the initiative in learning on my own and that learning is an important part of me.