Question-Driven Learning(QDL) is an effective learning approach. It means learning by solving questions.
Learning was often taken before questions
At school, or university, learning often is done before the questions is given. At school, Questions(mainly included in the homework) is given after students have the lesson. And, students attend the school, learn knowledge for years, and after they have graduated, they take jobs. This means they meet practical problems (questions) after the learning.
What is the problem with traditional learn method?
1. The knowledge or skills that are learned before you need may never have chance to be used. Some may be out of range, (for instance — if you learned Computer Science before you become a English teacher), or some may be outdated (if you learned a Computer Skill before you get a computer related job, four years later).
2. The knowledge information have been growing very fast, especially in the last decades, with the help of computers and other information technologies. Information are exploding. There are just to much to learn before you meet real problem, when you don’t know what you really need.
3. If the question come from real life, not from text books or school teachers, you understand the question in a more realistic way, and as the question/problem either stop you from doing some thing, or by solving it you will get rewarded, you will pay more attention to it and try harder to solve it.
4. The skills and knowledge that are learned by doing, will be longer lasting in your memory.
How to do it?
When problems come, ask, search (google) the learn the related knowledge, come up ways to solve the problem. If the problem doesn’t be solved, ask, search and learn more, or skip this problem, deal with another (hope it’s an easier one), after time when by, more problems will be solved. And, always review the questions and solutions, think what you have learned from them, and if necessary, note them down.
And, Still, you need to Learn before the question!
Why? Because Question-Driven Learning has its weakness.
1. If you want to do something, and you meet tons of problems, and you have hundreds of questions want to ask, you should not ask these questions, instead, take a book about the subject, perfectly a basic, fundamental one, leaving the details behind, and understand this thing you want to do by reading/scanning the book. After you have a specific question about the subject, then you are ready to ask or search.
2. If you don’t know what to do, what to ask or what to search. Reading books or taking an essential course about the subject will be necessary.