Learning by teaching

For two years already I'm teaching at SOMEXCLOUD, a Zurich-based social media academy. And in December I started to present webinars for Versity, an online education programme for marketing and communications which we launched at Kuble AG. Throughout these activities, I constantly feel that I'm learning as much as the people who attend my courses.

Apparently this feeling has already inspired a teaching method called Learning by teaching. The idea to combine the processes of learning and teaching dates even back to Seneca who proclaimed docendo discimus (= by teaching, we learn). Another quote which I think fits perfectly into this discussion: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said Mit dem Wissen wächst der Zweifel (= Doubt grows with knowledge).

The interaction between doubting and knowing points to the dynamics of knowledge which is particularly distinct when it comes to all things digital. Learning by teaching seems to tackle the challenge that knowledge about topics such as Facebook, SEO, or inbound marketing emerges and devaluates at an ever more rapid pace due to the speed of the internet's development.

The same forces also change traditional teaching environments and open up new possibilities; the above mentioned webinars are an example. Meanwhile every blogger, Instagram photographer, or administrator of a LinkedIn group can be learning by teaching if he or she adopts this idea as the principle for creating and publishing content.