What do I need to learn? An exercise to prioritize learning goals

This paper describes an exercise for learners to identify what they should learn in order to meet their learning skills. Lifelong learners often undertake non-formal learning activities, when they try to gain knowledge outside of formal, structured, programs. They need to be self-directed and have to identify both how they learn best and what they need to learn.. We suggest a simple exercise that can help learners to identify their learning priorities, relieving stress linked to self-directedness. Each skill or learning objective is to be broken down into sub-skills that the learners have to achieve their objective. Learners first go through this list and rank them in a forced distribution matrix, following the q-sorting procedure, in which only a few insertions can be ranked as most negative and positive. Through that exercise, the learner realizes the scope of the skill to learn and can decide what to focus on during the learning process.