Our society has done a pretty good job at Taylorizing the learning experience. It's structured, it's ordered, it's routine, and it's efficient. And it's quite ineffective. (For proof, compare the results of US children against other nations.)
I learn best when I can explore and make mistakes. The mistakes is the important part. I learn only when I make a mistake. When I do something and get the wrong results, I try different methods until one works. That's how I learn Apparently I'm not alone in this.
In the book Bringing Design to Software, Schön and Bennet's essay describes the results of students with two computer programs. One (named "McCavity") was designed to be a tutoring program and the other ("GrowlTiger") was created as a simple design tool. Both were for engineering students.
The results were surprising. The students found McCavity (the tutoring program) boring and were more interested in GrowlTiger.
Maybe the results were not so surprising. The tutoring program provided students with information but they had little control over the delivery. The design program, on the other hand, let students explore. They could examine the problems foremost in their minds.
Exploring, trying things, and making mistakes. That's how I learn. I don't learn on a schedule.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. And you can lead students to knowledge, but you can't stuff it down their throats.
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