Self-Assessment: A Required Skill for Lifelong Learners

by Vern R. Johnson

During your formal schooling years, you were ultimately responsible for learning, but your teachers guided your learning development by:

• Encouraging your desire to find purpose and prepare for life and career experiences
   

• Outlining what you needed to accomplish to succeed in the path you chose
   

• Defining the specific knowledge, skills and attitudes you needed to acquire for each of your outlined accomplishments

• Guiding you through appropriate learning activities, by offering a well-defined curriculum covering specific concepts in a progressive set of courses
   

• Using examinations to assess your learning, to compare it to established educational standards and to verify that you were ready to use what you learned
   

• Motivating you to use what you learned to support your career and life experiences

Many of you have graduated and are pursuing your careers, but you must continue to learn for the rest of your life — at least for the rest of your professional life. The difference between then and now is that now you must be both a teacher and a learner. Apply the same strategic learning process your former teachers used. This time around, however, you will be the implementer, rather than relying on someone else to take lead.

Just as your teachers implemented a six-step process to teach and guide you, you can follow a complementary process that includes:

1. Goal — Identify a significant purpose that you want to achieve.

2. Objectives — With the help of your boss, colleagues and peers, outline what you must accomplish to achieve that goal. For example, what do you have to do to progress in your career field?

3. Learning outcomes — Define the specific knowledge, skills and attitudes you'll need to develop to accomplish the objectives you’ve outlined.

4. Learning activities — Identify and participate in appropriate learning activities to gain the knowledge, skills and attitudes you need. These activities can involve study, experience and/or reflection (see www.todaysengineer.org/Feb04/learning.asp).

5. Assess performance — Continue participating in learning activities until, based on the measurement of pertinent evidence, you can verify that you can perform tasks requiring the knowledge, skills and attitudes you’ve gained.

6. Do it — Go out and achieve your purpose. When you can verify that your learning has reached a level matching the requirements, you will be confident and ready to accomplish your objectives — and ultimately achieve your goal.

Steps 1, 2 and 3 serve as the foundation for the process, and determine what learning needs to take place. Steps 4 and 5 describe what learning is all about. Together, they culminate in Step 6 — the achievement.

Career Achievement Requires Learning and Assessment

To learn, participate in activities that require the knowledge, skills and attitudes you’re trying to develop. Repeat the activities until you can confidently and competently perform the requisite tasks. And don't forget to assess your performance from time to time. Being a lifelong, self-reliant learner challenges you to be personally motivated to continually learn and assess your performance, while simultaneously applying what you're learning.

As a technical professional reading Today's Engineer, it's probably safe to assume that you're interested in finding ways to bolster your professional vitality and advance — or at least survival in — your career. To help you progress along those lines, a group of career professionals has identified seven areas in which you should be able to demonstrate competence. The group's work led to an online assessment tool that can help you measure your current career abilities and identify performance goals. To use this assessment tool, click on the ASSESS button below and complete the questionnaire.

Looking Ahead

The next few issues of IEEE-USA Today’s Engineer will feature additional self-assessments, focusing on:

• Managing conflict in a small-team setting — Identify your preferred style for managing conflict with associates and team members (click here to read the article in the January 2005 issue)
   

• Understanding and assessing team dynamics — Identify and measure your work team’s current stage of development
   

• Gaining intellectual maturity — Determine your current level of intellectual development and identify the learning activities you need to enhance it

Of course, you'll need to improve your performance in many areas over the course of your lifetime. And improvement in any area will require you to develop your own means to assess progress relative to your goals. Generic assessments may help, but more than likely you'll need to gather evidence, conduct personal reviews, and solicit critical input from colleagues, constituents and customers. Whatever your approach, it's important to remember that:

• Assessment is not possible until you have first established clear performance goals.
   

• Assessment is about performance. That is, assessments measure a person’s performance relative to a certain ability, not the value of that person.
   

• Assessment is based on gathering and evaluating evidence of performance, not wishful thinking or gut feelings.
   

• Assessment serves as the basis of improved learning, professional growth and self-confidence. Confidence and the freedom to practice your profession come when you know your area of expertise, and can trust your own judgment.

Self-assessment may not always be easy or fun; in fact, sometimes it may seem to reveal too much about your personal performance abilities. But self-assessment is learnable and necessary. Enhanced, self-directed learning can lead you on to your life's purpose.

Vern R. Johnson is Associate Dean of Engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson and is IEEE-USA's Career Activities Editor. This article is adapted from materials in his book, Becoming a Technical Professional (Kendall/Hunt Publishing, Dubuque, Iowa, 2003). Johnson can be reached at todaysengineer@ieee.org.