Learning live. When it really matters

Our guest blogger, Anika Sharma is a digital thought leader, a mother and a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. She has been consistently named one of the top digital global leaders to follow in 2020, 2021 and 2022. When she is not helping Fortune 500 clients navigate the world of large-scale digital transformations, you can find her planting herbs in her garden, meditating with her friends, swimming long laps and training for triathlons. Find her on twitter @theanikasharma and on instagram @theanikasharma

I am a huge fan of learning. I have inherited this love for learning from my father who continues to study even at the ripe age of 75!  It’s a habit that has bode me well, as I continue to navigate and change countries, careers, and technologies.

We are very quickly becoming a generation of lifelong learners. As this article from PEW says, in this digitalized global age the next generation of young citizens will create jobs (not seek them) and collaborate to advance an increasingly complex world. That will require imagination, empathy, resilience, entrepreneurship and the ability to fail forward. The most obvious implication of a world that requires learners to constantly adapt and grow is the need to build the capacity and motivation for lifelong learning.

People used to learn to do work; now learning is the work, and the post-industrial era will require coaching, mentoring, teaching, and evaluating to create passion for learning. 

There should be an appreciation for the value of learning well beyond high school, and beyond college graduation. People need to take ownership over what they learn, how they learn, where they learn, and when they learn. And lifelong learning requires people to not only continuously learn new things but also unlearn and relearn, as the world morphs. 

E-learning platforms have made this possible and brought learning to our doorstep. In 2019, the global e-learning market was sized at almost USD 200 billion. By 2026, the global e-learning market is expected to reach almost USD 400 billion. Long story short, if you want to learn a skillset today, there are plenty of options available. These online platforms make it easy for me to learn from anywhere, from anyone and most importantly, anytime. A moment that was not possible 20 years ago. 

And so I sat back to think what learning meant and what the value of “live” learning was. What can I learn online from a YouTube video and what would I dare not learn even if it was available online for free.   

Yoga, for example, is something I would never try learning without someone to teach me. Yoga embodies a lifelong journey and one that needs to be done right. The asanas are all about form and they can go very wrong if not guided at the right moment. The head stand should only be learnt with proper, live supervision. How long should one hold a stance, how long should one forward-fold, what are some of the rituals around the asanas? All of these are learnings that can only come from a seasoned yoga teacher. More importantly, from someone who is around to give me live feedback.

Playing the sitar continues to be an unfulfilled dream of mine. I remember attempting to play the sitar almost 30 years ago, at Bharti Vidya Bhavan. I remember this distinctly – frustrating as it was, the teacher did not let me touch the strings for the first three classes. She wanted me to learn how to sit and hold the sitar before ever attempting to play it. Thirty years later I may not know how to play the sitar but I sure know how to sit and hold it right. A lesson I will not forget this lifetime.

There are many things I have learnt online from a YouTube video or a TED talk. But there is a value to learning and interacting “live” with an expert guiding me. To me, it’s when I want to learn something for life. A new language, yoga, music, coaching, therapy – all of these are areas where I believe there is tremendous value that learning “live” can bring. 

No matter what brings you to the doorsteps of learning, how beautiful is it to live in a world where you can access the best teachers from anywhere, to learn from.  Perhaps it is time for me to fulfil that dream of learning the sitar. Just need to find the right teacher who can bring me there, live, in real time. ~

infyni offers live training online for kids and adults. All our courses are listed on www.infyni.com