Informal learning refers to learning that occurs away from a structured, formal classroom environment. Informal learning is considered a form of asynchronous learning. Informal learning is a style of learning in which the learner sets their own goals and objectives.
Informal learning occurs in a variety of places, such as at home, work, and through daily interactions and shared relationships among members of society. For many learners, this includes language acquisition, cultural norms, and manners.
In informal learning, there is often a reference person, a peer or expert, to guide the learner. If learners have a personal interest in what they are informally being taught, learners tend to expand their existing knowledge and conceive new ideas about the topic being learned. For example, a museum is traditionally considered an informal learning environment, as there is room for free choice, a diverse and potentially non-standardized range of topics, flexible structures, socially rich interaction, and no externally imposed assessments.
While informal learning often takes place outside educational establishments and does not follow a specified curriculum, it can also occur within educational settings and even during formal learning situations. Educators can structure their lessons to directly utilize their students informal learning skills within the education setting.
Informal education is a self-controlled and self-guided type of learning that usually doesn’t have a formal curriculum and can be spontaneous. Now, let us talk about the most important benefits of such education.
You Study Whenever You Feel Like it
You don’t have to commit to any schedules, you just choose your most productive time – it can be any part of the day – and study. If you feel an urgent need to read about asteroids at 2 a.m. go ahead and find out how they fly in the space. If you wish to spend several days on improving your English grammar, nobody will tell you that you can’t allot so much time on one topic. You are the one who determines when, where, how often and how long, and that’s the beauty of it.
It is Less Stressful and More Relaxing
Nobody will pressure you to read a page of the book faster or to finish your essay in two hours. You have all the time in the world to get to the bottom of the topic you want to become more proficient in. There will be no stress from deadlines and judgment from the ones who can do something better than you. Informal learning presupposes that you relax in a comfortable zone and perceive information more efficiently.
You Can Pick Any Form of Studying
Any service on the internet is available for your studies, be it an online course, YouTube channel or FB chatting. You don’t have to follow the conventional way of learning like attending lectures, taking notes, reading boring books and doing homework. You can obtain help from any online or offline corner, and gain much more profit from that.
You are More Motivated than Ever
Informal education is very similar to natural knowledge acquiring. You feel like finding an answer to the question, start looking for information fast and satisfy your desire almost at once. You are highly motivated and aimed at getting results. What is more, this freedom of changing your mind at the last minute or choosing to learn whatever you want gives you the necessary inspiration to go above and beyond in studying
