Defining Your Learning Objectives for 2010

Last summer at the ILTA conference, I was interviewed by Kina Kim of Pivotal Discovery. During that interview, we discussed how to best achieve your learning goals as a litigation support professional. Have you assessed your current skill set and defined your learning goals & objectives for 2010?

Here is the video and a few notes on my key points:

• Define your learning objectives
  • What do you already know
  • What experience do you already have
  • What do you expect to get as a ROI for training
• Define your learning style:   Self directed or classroom
  • Self directed
    • Requires discipline, passion to learn
    • Blogs / podcasts
    • Google alert
    • Free vendor sponsored webinars (live or on-demand)
    • Vendor whitepapers
    • Requires ability to discern marketing from reality/ grain of salt
    • Networking events – targeted conversations
    • Magazines like Litigation Support Today and Law Technology News
    • Specific questions for your mentor – don’t waste their time & yours waiting for them to tell you what you think you need to know
  • Classroom
    • Still requires discipline but you can get all of the information at once or in a small period of time
    • Teacher / trainer
    • SME
    • Small group v large group
    • Conference v seminar v true classroom
• Training Others – If you are the trainer
  • Do you go to a class or seminar with the “train the trainer” mentality? Be intentional
  • Networking with others
  • Assess the learning style of your team
  • Define the learning goals for your team – what do they need to learn this year?
  • E-Learning – does your firm have formal training dept and resources that you can develop for or work with training team as an SME for them to develop courses
  • Intranet
  • Blogs, wikis
  • Knowledge management
  • A collection of resources based on your research