Steve Wheeler pointed in his blog post “Hanging in there” out some really good points. He posted “…informal learning is more reliant upon an individual’s intrinsic motivation than it is by any external pressures. In other words, we learn because we are interested.”
I couln’t agree more with that! But how to “create” that interest? Or better how is the interest in informal learning different from the one in formal learning? Is it the relation to the content? So that directly relation to the content causes intrinsic motivation (the chinese girlfriend) and an indirect relation (good grades lead to a good job leads to a good pay … some day) needs an extrinsic motivation?
Could it be possible for somebody to improve his motivation by creating intrinsic motivation, just by finding a way of directly relating the learning content to one self? That would imply to be very creative in order to relate any given topic to a current living situation.
But how to achieve that? Creativity is defined as “…thinking items together, that haven’t been thought together before and getting a value out of it…”. I would say that matches the need of connecting externally imposed demands of learning content and personal interests pretty much.
This again would emphasise a certain view on PLEs. Not only would they document ones successful learning history in an e-Portfolio and an overview on current learning activities but they could be used as a support for trying to find a relation between given learning content or topics and current personal situations. Situations of any professional or private nature. The closer to ones interest the better.
I guess with the help of some semantics in the future it will get easier for a PLE to find connections that not even me was thinking of.
My guess is, the more clear I can see what’s in it for me, the more important “it” is for me, the more motivated I am.
What’s your opinion? Any experiences with that? WVDA67ET62Q2