How People Learn

One of the differences between a novice and an expert thinker is experience in the given area. Experts tend to have a longer amount of time spent in their area of expertise. As stated by The Center for Teaching experts have well organized knowledge and they can easily retrieve that knowledge when needed. Where as a novice has little to no knowledge in the given area and, while they may be able to quote an answer, there is no context and they will be unable to recognize patterns and adjust their thinking accordingly.

One area in which I am still a novice is Excel. In my other course we have been asked to advise on cases using excel formulas and formatting. While I can plug in certain formulas based on past use I am certainly no expert in when to apply certain formulas and when not. I tend to try to utilize the same formulas for everything because that is what I know. When asked to use other formulas I can plug them in but I’m not sure how to apply them to other situations.

An area in which I consider myself an expert is the dispute system that I helped design at my work. Since I helped design it I know how it operates like the back of my hand and can easily apply concepts and scenarios to the system in order to recreate and adjust. I am consistently asked to provide my input and to brainstorm with others to come up with defect solutions and enhancements.

On my journey to becoming an expert in the dispute system I had to continuously think and rethink on designs, tweaking the requirements as I went so that the system could work in a way that was clean and efficient for the agents and fairly easy to build and maintain for IT. This was a long journey and we are still tweaking as we go. I look back at some of the decisions I made a year ago and know I would do things a little differently now based on my experience with the system after it went live. I am always reflecting on decisions made to determine can that concept be reutilized or reimagined based on current knowledge and experiences.

Works Cited

Center for Teaching. “How People Learn.”   https://cft.vanderbilt.edu. Vanderbilt University. Web. 14 March 2019.