/learning-how-to-learn

How to Become a More Effective Learner

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How to Become a More Effective Learner

Learning How to Learn, is a Coursera course taught by Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski, Offered By McMaster University and University of California San Diego. I like the course, as a firm believer in lifelong learning, I'd like to keep improving my learning skills, therefore made this GitHub project, so maybe this can inspire others.

learning-how-to-learn

  • Is a slider site using reveal.js
  • The first slider is hardcoded.
  • Rest sliders are generated by
    • reading this README.md below, using marked.js at build time.
    • and injected to dom with js at run time;

Focused mode and diffuse mode

πŸ™

The two types of networks that the brain switches between.

Focused mode

🐑

  • Highly attentive states.
  • Our neural pathways link brain areas, such related to what we are thinking.
  • Relates to an intense concentration on a specific problem or concept.

Use focused mode to learn concepts, basic, fundamental knowledge.

🐳

Diffuse mode

🐠

is a more relaxed, resting state.

  • Where our neural pathways randomly link brain areas.
  • Often involves a big-picture.
  • After hard focused work, relax, and do things that allow diffuse mode to take over.

Diffuse mode often helps us generate new ideas, being creative, understand things at the concept level.

🐣

Benefit from both focused and diffuse modes,

to learn more effectively and being creative.

πŸ¦‹

Working and Long-term memory

🧠

Working memory

Immediately and consciously processing in our mind.

🐟

  • It is believed that working memory holds only about 4 chunks of information.
  • Like a computer Random Access Memory, relatively small in capacity and stores information temporarily.

Long-term memory

πŸ¦‘

  • is like storage or a computer hard disk, relatively bigger capacity, can store information longer time.
  • important for learning, because we need to store fundamental knowledge to learn more advanced.
  • Move information from working memory to long-term memory takes time.

Spaced repetition

πŸ’«

spacing repetition out over some days is a good way to move working memory to long-term memory.

Long-term memory needs to be revisited occasionally to keep the memories accessible.

Create visual metaphors, analogies, and stories

🧜

  • To help remember and understand concepts.
  • To see something in our mind's eye.

Helpful not only in art, and literature, but also allow the scientific, and engineering world to make progress.

🐾

Help to avoid being blocked by thinking about problems in the wrong ways.

Sleep

πŸ’€

Studies have shown that sleep is a vital part of memory and learning.

During sleep, our brain:

πŸŒ€

  • Erase trivial memories.
  • Strengthen areas of importance.
  • Rehearses some tougher parts we trying to learn.
  • Going over and over neural patterns to deepen and strengthen them.

Strength our ability to:

πŸ•΅

  • Figure out difficult problems.
  • Find meaning and understanding of what we are learning.

Learning, try to understand or solve problems right before a nap or sleep

πŸ‘Ό

  • Increase the chance of dreaming about it.
  • Enhance our ability to understand it.

Make a next day plan before sleep

🧚

so our subconscious, diffuse thinking processes can have a chance to help assist us in actually accomplishing the tasks the next day.

Too little sleep

πŸ€•

over a too long time is associated with headaches, depression, heart disease, diabetes, and dying earlier.

Chunk

🎟

Chunks are pieces of information that are bound together through meaning

When we chunk an idea or concept,

we do not need to remember all underlying details.

🚴

It's like riding a bike, we only need the main idea of biking, all the underlying complex biking activities take place with that simple chunk of thought.

One of the first steps toward gaining expertise in math and science is to create conceptual chunks.

πŸ”¬

When we grasp one chunk

✨

  • it can be related in surprising ways to other similar chunks,
  • not only in the field we are learning but also in very different fields.

When we have a good library of chunks

πŸ’’

our diffuse mode can connect chunks in new ways to solve new problems.

Chunking (how to form chunks)

πŸ§™β€β™‚οΈ

Focus on the information we want to chunk

🎯

  • focused mode reaches through the slots of working memory to make connections in various parts of the brain,
  • to tie together ideas,
  • often helps us to create chunks.

My brain doesn't seem to work

🀯

  • When we are angry, stressed, or afraid,
  • our brain begins to lose the ability to make connections in various parts.

Understanding

πŸ—Ώ

  • Understand the basic idea we trying to chunk.
  • Understanding helps hold the underlying memory traces together.
  • A chunk without understanding is a useless chunk, that won't fit in with other material we are learning.

Draw idea or concept

πŸ—ƒ

  • "Chunking" involves compressing information,
  • so it is easier to draw a "chunked" idea or concept into mind.

Gain context, seeing how and when to use the chunk

🧐

  • Going beyond the initial problem, seeing more broadly.
  • Repeat and practice with both related and unrelated problems.
  • Knowing when to use and when not use the chunk.
  • Fit the chunk into the bigger picture.

Like a tool we use

πŸ”§

if we understand it, know how to and when to use (not use), have a big picture of the tool, we can benefit most from it.

Illusions of competence

🎈

When we repeatedly read notes or textbook

πŸ“‘

  • When we draw lines under important sentences or mark them with colors.
  • But with relatively few engage in self-testing or retrieval practice.

When we have the book (or Google) open right in front of us

πŸ“–

  • It provides the illusion that the material is also in our brain, but it's not.

Avoid illusions of competence

πŸš‘

  • Test ourselves on what we are learning, make sure we are not fooling ourselves.
  • Recall allowing us to see whether or not we really grasp the idea.

The importance of recall

πŸ’­

Using recall,

mental retrieval of the key ideas, rather than passive rereading, will make study time more focused and effective.

πŸ”­

By recall and practicing material, we can learn more and deeper than any other study approach.

Recall while outside our usual study place

πŸ–

Recalling material when outside usual place of study help us strengthen our grasp of material by viewing it from a different perspective.

Do not wait too long,

βŒ›

to practice recall, we do not want to start from scratch again.

Testing

🌈

Testing is a powerful learning experience.

  • Take a test is more effective than study without it.

Mini tests

πŸ“š

Research has shown that testing during studies is one of the best ways to understand and retain information.

  • The test process becomes routine and a natural extension of the learning process.

Start hard, jump to easy

πŸ§šβ€β™‚οΈ

When we start solving problems, start first with the hardest one, when we get stuck, jump to another problem immediately.

  • When we switch our attention away, it allows the diffuse mode to begin its work, then come back with a big picture perspective.

Continuous Development

πŸ—

The great wall of China was not built in one day.

In software development,

βš™

rather than improving in one large batch, updates are often made continuously, piece by piece.

Persistent

🐝

Divide our learning or goal into small doses, and do a little every day.

  • Give focused and diffuse modes the time to understand what we are learning.
  • As we repeat we active our long-term memory.

Learning is like gaining muscles

πŸ’ͺ

It wouldn't happen overnight, we train, eat, sleep, and our muscles grow bigger over time.

Fit our level

πŸ‹οΈ

Same as a workout, lift too heavy may physically hurt us, right technique, lift a weight that we can handle.

It's important to have positive feedback to gain motivation to continue.

🌟

Deliberate practice

β›·

on the toughest aspects of the material, continuously.

  • Can help lift average brains into the realm of those with natural gifts.
  • Similar to lift heavier weights, which leads our muscles to grow bigger and quicker.
  • We can also practice certain mental patterns that deepen and enlarge our minds.

By deliberate practice, we can also gain better results.

πŸ‡

Interleaving

☯️

Practice a mixture of different kinds of problems using different strategies, versus overlearning.

Interleaving our studies

πŸš€

  • by skipping around through problems in different chapters and materials,
  • seems to make learning more difficult.
  • but it helps us learn more deeply.

Overlearning

πŸ”¨

Once we got the basic idea down during a session, continuing at it doesn't strengthen the long-term memory connections we want.

Worsely, focusing on one technique is like learning carpentry by only practicing the hammer. After a while, we may think that anything can be fixed by just bashing it.

Physical exercise

πŸ€Έβ€β™‚οΈ

  • We once fault thought that neurons in our brain wouldn't grow as adults.
  • But we now know that in a few places, new neurons are born every day.
  • One of these places is very important for learning.
  • Exercise assists our brain to grow new neurons.

New neurons help us learn new things

πŸ‚

but they will die if we do not use them.

  • New experiences will rescue them.
  • Learn new subject areas.
  • Traval exotic foreign country, experience differents.

Exercises

also, help the nervous to survive.

🌱

  • Exercise is by far better than any drugs on the markets.
  • Exercise benefits all of our other organisms.
  • It's a good way of interleaving our learning or problem-solving.
  • Give our brain time to practice diffuse thinking.

References

  • Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects -- Coursera
  • A Mind For Numbers: how to Excel at math and Science (Even if You Flunked Algebra) -- Dr. Barbara Oakley 2014