The Coursera’s MOOC – Learning How to Learn by Barbara
Oakley was an amazing course that would take you to unfamiliar insights of
Human Brain capabilities and how to tweak them to best suite for our practical
life and learning. The course changed my perspective towards learning by
teaching how to make my learning effective with some practical tips. Interview
with Benny Lewis, a polyglot- a guy who mastered multiple languages was remarkably inspiring.
His statement regarding the learning strategy is quite impressive. “If you
failed in learning or understanding something, then it is not a problem with
your abilities or skills. It is the problem with the process or approach you
opted for learning. You have to change your process to learn effectively”. The
whole course gave me bits and pieces of several information that I can use to
formulate my own learning process or framework.
There are two fundamental modes of thinking- Focused and
Diffused modes. In short, Diffused is
a big picture look on a problem while Focused is a very detailed level walk through
of the same. Crux of the process is to make use of both focused and diffused
mode of thinking. They are like two sides of a coin and have to be used back
and forth to deliver extraordinary results. Focused mode thinking will get
preference when the problem in plate is familiar to you. The brain will look
for the similar thought patterns already exists. This can sometime causes a
problem called “Einstellung”, it hinders new thoughts. Since similar thought pattern
exist in brain it will not try to look for or learn new patterns. It is quite
tricky in such case that you have to unlearn what you have learnt and start
with fresh thoughts. The tricks
practiced by the famous Italian painter Salvador Dali and legendary scientist
Thomas Edison to make use of these two modes of thinking is pretty interesting.
They used nap (short sleep) to achieve transition from focused mode to diffused
mode of thinking in order to solve difficult problems.
As like computer programs the human brain also has working
memory and long term memory (Analogy with the computer is made to easily
visualize the things. I'm a computer expert, huh? familiar with RAM and Hard
Disk). Working memory is very less in size compared to the other one. Unlike
computer, both working and long term memories are constantly undergoing
physical changes every second in human brain. There are some Neuro modulators
that influence your learning process. Acetylcholine -helps in learning and
attention, Dopamine – helps in motivation and mental rewards; Serotonin-
decides social life and risk taking. Physical exercise plays a vital role in
controlling them to result in efficient work of the brain. Body release chemicals
when it is under stress. How do you interpret body’s reaction to those chemicals
makes the major difference. This is alternatively stated as the confidence
factor. Instead of approaching a problem with scared mind, assumption and faith
that you can do in best improves the performance and result.
There are several techniques you can use to master your
learning skills. Metaphor and Analogy are few powerful tools. Another important
thing is to make use of the visual memory area of your brain. It has huge capacity;
it can remember enormous visuals, smells, taste, sound etc. You might have practically
experienced this. Situations like meeting an old class mate of school, you
would be familiar with face but you could not recollect the name as it he/she was not in contact in recent past. So making solutions to diagrams/visuals and memorizing
them with your visual memory is a cool way of learning. Practice and repetition over
a period of time again and again is required to place it in the long term
memory of our brain. Recalling, like going through the notes again after some period of time
is a way to harden your memory. Overlearning or spending more time continuously
on a thing is a waste of time. Instead we have to practice interleaving and
repetition. “LITTLE WORK, EVERYDAY” is the key trick. Another important aspect
of learning is simplifying any bigger problem into smaller chunks. Chunk is nothing
but a group of similar information. Once you started doing chunking any
information, it can leverage results beyond our expectation. Chunk can be treated as a clearly defined small
framework of a solution. Once you start practicing this, you will be able to find
similarities with other chunks (a generic problem and its solution) of different
topic and you can learn things faster.
Procrastination is a major enemy of learning. You need to
make a plan to tackle them. A proposed solution is the use of POMODORO
technique. It is a short and focused learning time. Usually it will be a 25
minute uninterrupted learning time. Also
watch out constantly for cues that prompt you to deviate from it. Make your own
learning process (Flow of actions and habits with respect to time) to get your
product (outcome or result). Having a weekly and daily TO-DO plan is a
supporting factor for learning. Like starting time, it is equally important to
plan the exit (finishing) time as well. Planning can be made by mixing different
task to make use of diffused mode of thinking. The Law Of Serendipity says –“The
lady luck favors the one who tries”. As per the law, planning well or preparing well is a part of
attempt.
Brain can be considered as a sophisticated device which comes without
an instruction manual. It is our task to create an instruction manual for it.
Throw away the imposter syndrome (negative thoughts like I’m not capable, and I
achieved things just by luck) and come up with strategic instruction manual or
framework for your brain to learn and conquer things.
This is what I picturized/summarized the entire course. I tried to create a flow diagram that start with a problem to solve in brain, goes though various stages and finally getting into our memory or grasping (in other word it is Learning). I felt rewarded when my class mates likes to add this picture to the Hall of Fame of the course (http://
Barbara Oakley @ TEDx
Final Notes:
The entire course was a wonderful experience for me. I got to know the power of MOOC, the way people collaborate, the way people grasp and share knowledge. It is amazing and I have no doubts that MOOCs would be the future of education. I really appreciate the effort people put to share their knowledge. Even I want to contribute my share. That's how my blog originated.
Links
Links
- Coursera|https://class.coursera.org/learning-003
- One Place to summarize|https://sites.google.com/site/howthebrainlearn/home
- Hall Of Fame of the course|http://howthebrainlearnsiii.blogspot.it/
- More details on Brain|http://www.brainfacts.org/
- Understanding Maths|http://betterexplained.com/
- MIT Course in 1yr|http://www.scotthyoung.com/
- Learn Languages|http://www.memrise.com/
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