Course Review: Learning How To Learn
From a long list of interesting classes, I decided to start this summer’s regular open coursework with the Coursera Learning How To Learn taught primarily by Dr. Barbara Oakley from UCSD. This is a self-guided short course (four hours or so divided into four “week” modules with graded quizzes after each module and a final overall quiz.
The course approach is a high-level neuroscience-informed look at understanding how we form memories and incorporate new material into usable concepts for long-term recall and integration with other knowledge. Sprinkled throughout this material is specific suggestions and techniques particularly appropriate to a college undergraduate on studying, taking tests, etc. I would sum up the key points as follows:
- practice new concepts regularly, not too much but repeated over a longer period of days (don’t cram, don’t procrastinate)
- your brain can be used in a focused or diffuse mode and you need both approaches in order to, respectively, concentrate on really understanding new material, and connect new ideas with existing understanding in a big picture.
- analogy and metaphor are really important for memory and for insight.
- repeated use and self-assessment (recall) strengthens, summarizes, and synthesizes new mental pathways into useable shorthand concepts.
- vary your learning environment, but remove distractions, and get lots of excercise and sleep.
So while there’s nothing too surprising here, if you need a rationalization for NOT procrastinating, for excersizing and sleeping well, and for regularly recalling new information in order to learn it well, there’s good material in here.
This is the first of the newer-format / self-guided Coursera courses I’ve taken, with videos, within-video-questions, and quizzes/tests all integrated in a linear single interface. It’s a big improvement over the older Lectures vs Quizzes vs Reading hierarchy, but it also gives them more chances to pop an interstitial ad for their Verified Certificates into the flow.