365QOD- Day1293

Learning by Teaching

"People recall more and learn better when they expect to teach that  information to another person, a new study finds…

The likely reason why this fairly simple trick works is that it tends to automatically activate more successful learning strategies, the kind routinely  used by teachers…"- Jeremy Dean on PsyBlog

I read this line and immediately though to myself, "Isn't this obvious?"  Well, maybe it is obvious to me but not necessarily to others.  Why?

As someone who has instructed close to 70 different courses in my life, I always felt that I just needed to be ahead of the students in the subject in order to teach it.  I never felt that I had to be an expert to profess my knowledge BUT rather I needed to be willing to figure out how to most effectively transfer the knowledge and provide examples of how to apply it.  

Teaching for me served as a way of taking knowledge and organizing it for others.  As the quote advises, we activate more successful learning strategies by forcing ourselves to teach others.  This is exactly what happened with each course I instructed.  I forced myself to quickly learn, organize the subject, think of strategy on how to present it, and how to demonstrate how to apply it.  

Interestingly enough I find that there is a lack of teaching in the work place.  Why?  Most people feel that by teaching they are taking something away from themselves.  I do not believe this.  I believe that they do not know the subject material enough to organize their thoughts and present it well enough for the other person to learn it.  

Today's question is:

"Do you teach your co-workers?