Share a story about your best learning experience (could be a formal course or something more personal). Why did you enjoy it?

One of the best learning experiences I had was when I attended a leadership seminar. I attended the said seminar not because I was required to do it but because I wanted to hone my leadership skills. Personally, I believe that the seminar will teach me important things that I can apply in real life. Unlike other seminars that I have attended, this seminar focused on the attendees. In other words, this is not the typical seminar where a speaker talks and then everybody is expected to listen. The speaker only acts as a facilitator. During the seminar, we were given different scenarios and problems then we were tasked to explain what we would do with the given scenarios and problems as a leader. The given scenarios were engaging and I appreciate the fact that we were not given a “template” or “formula” of good leadership. More so, the attendees were given an opportunity to draw on their existing knowledge of leadership and explore their capabilities. After the seminar, I felt accomplished and motivated to learn new things even if it is not related to leadership.

Looking into the strategies used by the speaker in this seminar, I would say that she utilized the cognitivist approach. By not giving or not dictating what we should do as leaders, the speaker gave as an opportunity to discover and utilize strategies that we consider helpful or effective. In addition to this, thinking about the situations and scenarios also made us refer to our previous knowledge on leadership. In my case, I would often think of the good leaders I know and ask myself how they could possibly deal with the given scenario. Upon learning leadership from a cognitivist approach, I would say that this strategy is effective. This is because it makes the information to be learned meaningful and it also enables learners to organize their newly acquired knowledge with their existing knowledge.