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My goals with the book were pretty simple, and I aimed to translate the new science of learning, to make it more
Let me be honest: I'm a biased reviewer. In fact, I wrote this book. But GoodReads is giving me the chance to say a few words, and other people whose opinions that I trust have been saying good things about the book. Publisher's Weekly called Learn Better "engaging" and "thought-provoking," while author Walter Isaacson said the book was "alternately humorous, surprising, and profound."My goals with the book were pretty simple, and I aimed to translate the new science of learning, to make it more accessible and informative, to describe how people learn to learn. The result—I hope—is a narrative introduction into the research of how people gain new skills and knowledge.
Did I succeed? Did I fail? Want to give me feedback? Send me a note at ulrich @ ulrichboser. com
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Professor of Something: "Learn Better" by Ulrich Boser
"The act of writing is a good example of metacognition because when we think about composing sentences and paragraphs, we're often asking ourselves crucial metacognitive questions: Who will be reading this? Will they understand me? What things do I need to explain? This is why writing is often such an effective way to organize one's thoughts. It forces us to evaluate our arguments
If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.Professor of Something: "Learn Better" by Ulrich Boser
"The act of writing is a good example of metacognition because when we think about composing sentences and paragraphs, we're often asking ourselves crucial metacognitive questions: Who will be reading this? Will they understand me? What things do I need to explain? This is why writing is often such an effective way to organize one's thoughts. It forces us to evaluate our arguments and think about ideas. […] some describe writing as a form of "applied metacognition".
In "Learn Better" by Ulrich Boser
When I was a kid, we played football (the European version; I hate the word soccer) all day and must have been well over 10K hours. None of us got near even semi pro football. My son could do sprint training for 4 hours every night but he's not going to be Usain Bolt. There are thousands of musicians who have put in the practice but they're all on the 9 to 5 as well like myself (well, I'm more on the 08:30 to no-end-in-sight schedule, but that's just me being my usual obnoxious self…). Are we supposed to believe a la Gladwell that if we put in 10K hours we'll become experts at something? I don't believe this number, and neither does Boser. I think it's just a number which Gladwell thought would look good in one of his books (I forget which).
What about thinking about learning? Is there something there?
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value - see the value in what you're learning. If your disengaged out of principle, it's unlikely you'll learn much in your activity. If you're not interested, you're telling your brain not to learn.
target - know what it is you want to learn and target your learning goals every sess Pretty good - I think it was longer than it needed to be, but the examples did a good job of illustrating the benefits of putting into action the methods described within each chapter. So the ways we learn better are:
value - see the value in what you're learning. If your disengaged out of principle, it's unlikely you'll learn much in your activity. If you're not interested, you're telling your brain not to learn.
target - know what it is you want to learn and target your learning goals every session. Having a measurable outcome quite increases one's ability.
develop - get rapid feedback on what you need to improve. Use recall and self-quizzing as much as possible. Tutoring is super-effective. Take lessons if you can, they help!
extend - typically we hit plateaus or places where we're comfortable with our ability but still not as good as we can get. Train near the edges of your understanding or current capacity in order to stretch said capacity. Deliberate practice, you've probably heard it before. 600,000 minutes, or 36 million seconds, if you prefer.
relate - draw connections, use analogies, make sense of the seemingly disparate information you're receiving and try to paint a cohesive picture. We store relationships and connections between concepts much better than isolated facts.
rethink - reflect on what you've learned. Take time for silence. Let your background brain do some work too. Use the power of recall and spaced repetition systems such as Anki to really cement what you know. Our brains are naturally sort of leaky, so common reflection is necessary to truly absorb information. Consolidate what you know. Visualize if applicable. Rethink your learning process. Think about thinking.
Some similar takeaways to the Coursera course Learning How to Learn, which I really loved, but this book is also worth reading even if you've taken the course.
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Despite the author touting his use of a freelance editor, I wonder if they didn't see the "Relate" chapter. The chapter used the word "analogy" to talk about SAT analogies (bird is to nest like...), metaphors (reflecting on Einstein's journey may give more perspective), and critical thinking (what is true, possibly true, probably not true, and ridiculous about Holy Blood, Holy Grail's arguments).
The book references some good research but I can't in good faith recommend it, especially if you know anything about adult learning. If you're interested in school learning and reforming the way things are taught, then you may get a little out of it, but I'm sure there are better books about the trouble with American education. And as a manifesto to change education (which the epilogue felt like a bit), it lacked clarity and a driving call to action.
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He repackages established learning theories by giving anecdotes from contemporary researchers instead of referencing the more established terminology. If thi
I will caveat this by saying I am probably the wrong audience for this book, since I read a lot of this type of book, and I studied cognitive psychology as part of my grad school curriculum. But I hated this book. It uses/overused the most trite practices of pop science books in a way that will annoy anyone with any knowledge of the subject.He repackages established learning theories by giving anecdotes from contemporary researchers instead of referencing the more established terminology. If this is the only book you will ever read, that's fine. If you want to know more, then using the established terminology would be helpful. Examples: calling it "the forgetting curve" instead of Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve." Calling it spaced practice instead of spaced repetition. Doing a whole page on ZPD without actually calling it ZPD or once mentioning Vygotsky, instead referencing some researcher or educator he had coffee with. He talkes about how an educator at University of California "discovered" that some students used large piles of flashcards with spaced repetition. Yes, it's called a "Leitner box" and it is hardly revolutionary.
He uses sloppy writing. Roger Craig did not invent spaced learning, though the author sort of implies it. SuperMemo and Duolingo did not add it to their programs because of him. It existed long before him. (Which one can logically deduce from the note that he used Anki to practice for Jeopardy).
He repeats constantly. In every chapter he repeat the same ideas - self-quizzing or asking questions, getting feedback from an expert, etc. The book could have been a third of the size without the repetition. (Unless he is going for spaced repetition- see what I did there... )
Calling things the wrong things- he spent a whole chapter on "analogies." What he was really talking about was "pattern matching."
Non-sequiturs. Once part talked about how people don't notice things, and described a picture that had been drawn on and no one noticed for weeks, to a psych study about people not noticing a fight on the street (thank you for not citing the gorilla in the basketball game). The piece wraps with the conclusion that our brain is on autopilot because he used confirmation bias and justification to buy himself a new grill. huh?
Odd little things that make no sense in the real world. He was 6 so he was too young to have drawn a mustache on a painting. Really? Then my 4yo is wildly precocious. People who do lots of PowerPoint presentations don't put much thought into doing new PowerPoints because they are so used to it even if the meeting is different. Huh? If the content is different (and you are a professional) then of course you put more work into it, the delivery method is immaterial. According to him, everyone apparently scores themselves higher than average on how a toilet works. Uh, nope. I know jack about a toilet, and the beauty is that I don't have to. Everyone is overconfident so therefore it's "just embarrassing to to give the I've-got-no-idea-shrug." Why? Wouldn't you rather be the genuine person who admits they don't know something and gives someone else an opportunity to show what they know, or the asshole who pretends he knows it all while everyone recognizes he doesn't and sneers behind his back? Is that a guy thing? I have never felt the need to be omniscient or an expert in every single subject on the planet. That sounds really boring anyway.
If you're going to read books on learning, read something else. Read Josh Waitzkin's book. Or Tim Ferriss's books (he's less of a bro in the later ones). Or Daniel Goleman. Or Csikszentmihalyi. Read Jim Gee. Ruth Colvin Clark. Clark Quinn. Skip this one. Though if you do read it, it is skimmable- he takes forever getting to a point.
The unfortunate thing is that the methods he cites are not wrong. There's a lot of good advice in there. It's just packaged as new when it's not, skips over properly citing the founders in the field and the proper names of theories in order to make it sound new, and makes odd jumps in places. It could have been a much better book than it is with just a little work.
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Regardless, Boser provides a narrative format to learning research better served in a well-structured text such as "The ABCs of Learning" which I absolutely loved and does a more robust job of inte
Ultimately, it is lacking in writing quality and meanders with its stories, following formulaic non-fiction format of "This person knows ____. He is a ___ at ___ University and studies ____. Once upon a time, he was ____ and wondered ____, which led him to study ____ and discover ____." Over and over.Regardless, Boser provides a narrative format to learning research better served in a well-structured text such as "The ABCs of Learning" which I absolutely loved and does a more robust job of interpreting the research than Boser's arbitrary assumptions. Additionally, I am not sure that his categorizations of learning progress, "Value, Target, Develop, Extend, Relate, Rethink" and necessarily accurate and need to follow in succession rather than in parallel.
This is a good introductory text and a quick read (noting for a moment that its individual points regarding learning techniques are perfectly accurate) but for those more interested, there are better books.
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This is a readable, well-paced, organized introduction to the scientific literature on learning. Occasionally a bit heavy on anecdote (much like Malcolm Gladwell), but overall quite informative. It focuses mostly on the big picture, explaining in a general sense how learning occurs and how to structure your approach to learning in a global sense. Some specific practices are recommended, such as spaced repetition and
Learning is a skill. You can get better at it. Boser can help you discover how.This is a readable, well-paced, organized introduction to the scientific literature on learning. Occasionally a bit heavy on anecdote (much like Malcolm Gladwell), but overall quite informative. It focuses mostly on the big picture, explaining in a general sense how learning occurs and how to structure your approach to learning in a global sense. Some specific practices are recommended, such as spaced repetition and self-quizzing, but these really aren't the focus. The back of the book contains some useful summaries, strategies, and bibliography.
Probably the most significant point this book makes is that in order to learn well, people need to think about and monitor their own learning. So, for example, in attempting to learn German, I ought to identify priority objectives, devise a systematic plan for learning, keep regular tabs on how my learning is progressing, and occasionally reflect on or tweak my process. This "metacognition," taking a step back and thinking about thinking, not only helps someone learn a particular task better, but also improves the person's ability to learn in general.
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I recommend!!
I enjoyed reading this. There's some very valuable information and examples on better learning techniques. Some are very obvious but...I recommend!!
...more Ulrich Boser's book is really meant for people who never paid attention in class or couldn't. (Cramming, by the way, is effective for short-term goals like completing a midterm or final exam, after which one is unlikely to retain the information.)
Nevertheless, Boser is right that meaningful long-term learning can only be done through hard-study fueled by self-motivation. There is no magic pill. Deep reflection, expert feedback, and constant questioning of what one has learned or is trying to learn, is essential in acquiring strong knowledge and skills. The unsexy truth is that learning is a tedious process—one that demands endurance and perseverance.
Although the author has a good sense of what it is like to learn, he has little sense of what it is like to teach. One of the major flaws of Learn Better is that it ignores how the compulsory nature of school actually undermines the strategies outlined in the book. The strategies do work but are most effective when students are free to be self-directed and in charge of their own learning, conditions that most schools prevent.
Regrettably, Boser suggests that "policymakers" make changes "to improve the nation's system of schooling" and make it "better." Beyond its vagueness, it is a rather obtuse view. The people who can improve education and who ought to be in charge of it are the folks who actually teach in the classroom—not policymakers.
For me at least, it is difficult to say what in Learn Better was worthwhile. The book is presented in a bland and uninspiring writing style. For a text about education, it also suffers from some embarrassing and unforgivable typos and grammatical errors—I counted at least eight. I might overlook 1-2, but beyond that the author's credibility begins to crumble for me, especially if he or she has never taught in a classroom, which Boser has not, according to the book's back flap. Nancy N. Bailey, who copy edited this book, seems as unqualified for the job of proofreading as the author was for writing this book.
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Although there are six chapters, each focusing on a different phase of the learning process, my takeaways can be summed up in three key points:
1. Motivation(we need deeply personal reasons for why we are studying our topic)
2. Relation(relate ideas to other ideas to think de
Although there are six chapters, each focusing on a different phase of the learning process, my takeaways can be summed up in three key points:
1. Motivation(we need deeply personal reasons for why we are studying our topic)
2. Relation(relate ideas to other ideas to think deeper, more creatively, and challenge preconceptions)
3. Recall, recall, recall(we can't expect to remember material the first pass through)
I have one gripe with this book that is completely inexcusable, and is the reason for taking off one star: grammatical errors. Many errors. Words that should not have been in sentences, missing words, and continually misspelling the word "gaffe." This word was spelled "gaff" and means something the author did not intend. It boggles my mind that this book passed the editing stage without these errors getting corrected. Aside from this issue, I benefited significantly from this book and it is most definitely worth a read.
...more I enjoyed the book for some perspectives it offered on how 'learning' occurs and what are some tools/strategies/metho
Learning material from a vast assortment of various subjects (languages, history, politics, science) ranging from the obscure to the controversial in order to be able to understand and engage in conversation has been a great interest of mine. Being able not only to take in but assimilate stores of information and draw inferences is a skill that anyone could spend more time honing.I enjoyed the book for some perspectives it offered on how 'learning' occurs and what are some tools/strategies/methods that can be used to speed the process along. I thought some of the book was repetitive and some areas could have been explored in greater detail, but it was an interesting read and I'll be putting into practice some of the exercises described in this volume.
A decent read. Not a bad choice to invest in.
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Core Question: How can I learn better?
1. Create Value.
a. What is value?
Value is the meaning and significance we perceive in the skillset, intellectually, emotionally
Core Question: How can I learn better?
1. Create Value.
a. What is value?
Value is the meaning and significance we perceive in the skillset, intellectually, emotionally and socially.
b. Why is value important for learning?
Because value is a necessary condition for learning: learning requires motivation, and (deep) motivation consists of the cost (effort required), the reward (target), and the value (of the skillset). Value is the emotional fire that sustains motivation.
c. How should I create value for learning?
Value cannot be told or instructed; it must be self-generated by one's perceiving the connection between the skillset and their lives, within a free and safe space (but not too free; we still require some level of instruction and support).
- Instruction and support: academic press—how hard a teacher pushes his students; academic support—how students feel motivated by teachers; emotional support—encouragement and comfort for students to bear the strain of mental exercises.
- To perceive this connection, ask, How is this material valuable to me? How can I make it more relevant? How can I use this expertise in my own life?
- After perceiving the connection, we need to: (i) self-quiz and self-explain what we are learning—to make sense of what we are learning, and perceive how it relates to value; (ii) practise mindfulness—constantly look for value in what we are learning.
2. Form Targets.
a. What are targets about?
Targets are about taking focused steps to reach a definite goal in learning.
b. How can I set targets?
- Before learning a skillset, ask, what am I going to learn? what sort of plan do I have in order to learn?
- When creating a learning plan, beware of cognitive overload, e.g. too much information, stress, distractions.
- Instead,
(i) Ensure that we possess the foundational concepts needed for mastery,
(ii) Break down the 'curriculum' into bite-sized chunks of mastery while ensuring consistency,
(iii) Begin just beyond our existing knowledge,
(iv) Focus on 'pattern recognition'—i.e. connecting the data systemically, rather than rote memorisation,
(v) While setting goals, engage in metacognition: (a) Planning—how will I know what I know? what are my goals? what background knowledge do I have? (b) Monitoring—could I learn this idea in a different way? am I making progress? why am I doing what I am doing? (c) emotion-management—how do I feel?
-> To minimise emotional distress, (a) remove negative stimulus (e.g. stress), (b) mental imaging to overcome negative emotions (e.g. imagining one's successful performance), (c) create long-term strategies, (d) selftalk to remind yourself of progress, (e) believe that you
can overcome the specific task.
-> While difficulties can affect emotions, perceive them as indispensable for learning.
3. Develop skills.
a. What does it mean to develop skills?
It means to hone our abilities for improved performance.
b. How can I develop?
Development arises from two factors: (i) having a feedback loop, and (ii) a structured way of honing our skills.
-> (i) Having a feedback loop is very important because focused criticism helps us to recognise our mistakes better and provides ways of improvement. Examples include: coaching or high-quality curriculum, and self-monitoring errors. But note that feedback always requires explanations in order to be helpful. To appropriate the feedback well, we need to struggle with improvement through repetition or retrieval practice—viz. recall an idea and summarise it.
-> (ii) A structured way of honing our skills is by (1) retrieval practice and (2) dealing properly with errors.
--> (1) Retrieval Practice: Create two piles of cards: the first, with facts/concepts (e.g. Existentialism); the second, with questions (e.g. "Give an example", or "Draw this concept"), then pick a card from both piles of cards, one at a time. The rigour and precision is important because it forces the brain to create new neural structures to account for the knowledge.
--> (2) Dealing with errors: be prepared for them, as they are essential for developing expertise. Know our emotions, and then manage them by speaking to ourselves. Don't harp on
errors, but on performance.
4. Extend skills.
a. What does it mean to extend skills?
It means broadening and deepening an area of knowledge.
b. How can I extend skills?
(i) Explain what we are learning: can I describe the idea? can I clarify the skill? can I put it into my own words? In reading, ask: what did I just read? how does that fit together? have I come across this idea before?
(ii) Justify what you've learnt through arguments because they force us to engage with reasons.
(iii) Apply the knowledge by using concrete terms (e.g. vivid metaphors) to express the abstract knowledge.
(iv) Apply the knowledge by teaching; use open-ended questions often to encourage thinking.
(v) Appreciate ambiguity—effective learning requires uncertainty, and
we need to learn how to live with it.
(vi) Self-questioning: (1) Stretch your knowledge: make it more abstract; (2) Squeeze your knowledge: make it more concrete.
(vii) Introduce social diversity into dialogue—promotes critical thinking by making people more sceptical of each other, which forces us to understand their point of view.
5. Relate facts.
a. What does it mean to relate facts?
To relate facts is to understand a topic's underlying connections.
b. How can I relate facts better?
(i) Mix up our learning: practise using many different examples for a long chunk of time, and avoid repetition.
(ii) Be explicit about the deeper structure identified in the problem: e.g. writing the name of the concept implied.
(iii) Use hypotheticals (speculation): the 'what if' provokes us to consider aspects of the knowledge system.
(iv) Use the scientific process: (1) look at the evidence, (2) develop a theory, (3) test the theory, (through dedicated experimentation), (4) come to a conclusion.
(v) Use visual aids (e.g. Venn diagrams, concept maps)
(vi) Using software (e.g. DEVONthink, Scrivener) to sort through data to see connections.
(vii) Use analogies for:
- Comparing and contrasting ideas, which helps with understanding underlying ideas,
- Engaging in deeper forms of reasoning: it forces us to to study how we infer our conclusions, compare lines of thinking, expose assumptions.
(viii) Employ method of problem solving:
-> (1) Understanding—look to find the core idea or nature of the problem. What is the unknown? What are the data?
-> (2) Devising a plan—map our how we intend to address the problem by finding the connection between the data and unknown.
-> (3) Carry out the plan—trying to prove whether we are correct.
-> (4) Looking back—reexamining the result and the path that led to it, for people to consolidate their knowledge and develop ability to solve problems.
6. Rethink learning.
a. What does it mean to rethink learning?
It means to admit that we tend to be overconfident. For the following reasons: (1) Familiarity—if something looks simple or common (e.g. TED talks); (2) Past performance—success tends to breed complacency.
b. How can I rethink learning?
(i) Examine our own thinking: ask, what did I learn? What was hard to understand? What seems unclear?
-> Focus on the areas that give the most difficulty.
-> Change the context of the learning experience—e.g. printing the essay or reading out loud vs. reading from screen.
-> Most importantly, attitude: willingness to evaluate our performance closely and critically.
-> Review our learning periodically—distribute our learning over time.
(ii) Reflection: take time to deliberate on our knowledge and skills for a deeper sense of understanding.
-> Requires long, uninterrupted moments of calm for focused deliberation, even away from the study material and especially distractions. (even in sleep!)
-> Consider our emotional state while learning—need for cognitive quiet.
-> Before engaging in a learning task that takes a lot of concentration, people should work to push aside anxious thoughts.
The unfortunate fact is that this book contains a lot of mistakes -- sloppy, avoidable ones. Like the combinatorics problem in which Boser quotes someone saying "if there are seven options for each of the five things... there would be 7x7x7x7x7 or 75 possibilities" (both numbers can't be right). Or when he recounts the math problem of the skateboarder traveling at 6.5 miles per second (faster than the Space Shuttle) that makes no sense at all. Or when the phalanx of writers and editors going through this book still misspell "gaffe" as "gaff" a dozen times (kinda funny if it were intentional). Mistakes like these diminish trust in the source.
I appreciated the very useful 10-page "Took Kit" summary at the end of the book. The thing is, that could have been the whole book, since the main body of the book was a bit thin and repetitive. If you have no exposure to the science of learning, you will pick up some interesting and actionable information from "Learn Better." Otherwise, I refer you to the other books mentioned above.
-- Ali Binazir, M.D., M.Phil., Happiness Engineer and author of The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible, the highest-rated dating book on Amazon for 4 years, and Should I Go to Medical School?: An Irreverent Guide to the Pros and Cons of a Career in Medicine ...more
This book is about learning the methods of learning!
There are six chapters on six steps of learning in this book on Value ,Target, Develop, Extend, Relate and Rethink. And an epilogue and a toolkit. Toolkit has strategies based on the method of this book for learners, for paren
Call it the "stuff" approach to education. We think there's "stuff" to be learned—a fact, some procedures, a formula or two—and we want to jam that stuff into our brain's storage bins and drawers like an old pair of socks.This book is about learning the methods of learning!
There are six chapters on six steps of learning in this book on Value ,Target, Develop, Extend, Relate and Rethink. And an epilogue and a toolkit. Toolkit has strategies based on the method of this book for learners, for parents,teachers and managers and for policymakers.
This book's genre is popular science and so a comprehensive references list at the end of the book is given.
There are POP QUIZZES after most important sections to test our idea of the concept.But my only complain is there are no answers!
Personally I find the book quite lengthy as there were many anecdotes in the book. But I think they were there to illustrate the points in detailed manner.
Below I have summarized what I got to learn in each chapter.
Value
The writer said that we as learners have to discover for ourselves why we are into learning a particular subject or thing, it's hard to learn something if we don't see any meaning in it.
During my school days, I tend to believe that nobody can make you feel to learn something. Our teacher used to advise us on why learning is important, why we should learn doing maths or science or language. But I think they just don't strike a cord with students, we were just as perplexed as we were before all the advices.I even remembered someone asking to my techer of mathematics where he is going to use those sines and cosines of trigonometry.
But reading this book, I realized that it isn't going to work that way.
In short, just telling people that something is important is not enough. In fact, Hulleman has found that simply telling people that information has value can backfire. When we're told how to feel or think, we can feel threatened or overly managed.
Nobody can force you to see meaning.
The author advised to ask these questions to yourself to find your value: How is this material valuable to me? How can I make it more relevant? How will I use the expertise in my own life?
I can picture our teacher asking why we have not done our homework, and we , saying nothing,just kept standing still.
A wealth of research supports the idea of giving students control over how they learn a subject. In one recent study, for instance, some high schoolers had some choice over their homework. Others had no choice at all. The results were clear: The students who had more autonomy showed more motivation—and far better learning outcomes.
Yes, I believe this idea. If only students can have a choice to what they would be getting for homework, they would be more likely to complete it because somewhere they themselves are involved in the whole process.
I also like the author way of defining expertise:
Expertise is about having a deep network of connections within a skill or area of knowledge.
So a physicist who is an expert in a field like General Relativity (GR) knows very well how you connect dots in GR, how GR is connected to other fields and sub-fields in physics, and in science in general.Experts have 'patten-recognition skills'.
The books also seems to argue against the idea of highlighting:
In a large and recent review of the research, Kent State's John Dunlosky and some colleagues found that highlighting was a weak approach to learning, for instance. Why? It seems that the activity doesn't do enough to push people to build their knowledge. Likewise, rereading showed limited effects, according to Dunlosky and his colleagues. Why? Again, it appears that the activity doesn't spark enough mental doing.
There are many advices for anyone who want to train someone to learn. One that I like particularly is :
They [Teachers] should help students "learn a topic by breaking it down into the key elements of thinking required, then have the students practice that thinking," he told me.
One other thing that I think is also important is to never, ever give answers to your students. Just hints.
Target
Here the writer said to target your learning, actually he says be specific with your targets:
The writer also discusses about something called 'Knowledge Effect'.
It boils down to the fact that it's hard to learn something if you don't know anything about it.
When people attempt to learn something new, they'll often target "either the things they know already, or things that are just too difficult for them," according to Metcalfe's research.
This is very true.
Develop
I think most of the time we don't really know what we want to improve. We just say we want to improve our communication skills, but remain vague about what we really want to achieve or develop.
One notice useful research I found in this book is:
The effects of a high-quality curriculum are about the same as the effects of a high-quality instructor, even though high-quality curriculum is often cheaper.
I think this has huge implications for my country India. This is also the thing I have always liked to emphasize on, I am of this opinion that we need to change many things about our curriculum, there are a lot of things to work on.
Extend
The author has advised on how we can extend what we have learned :
Imagine you recently wrote an email detailing your thoughts on a documentary that you saw on Netflix. Again, you flushed out the idea—and engaged in a more direct form of sense making—and studies show that you'll have a richer sense of the Netflix movie and its themes.
Ask explanatory questions.Specifically: Can I describe the idea? Can I clarify the skill? Can I put it into my own words?
Ask why queries. Why does the author make this claim? Why should I believe the author? Why would this matter?
And this wonderful advice, teach someone else.
In one recent study by psychologist John Nestojko, for instance, subjects who believed that they were going to teach learned more than a group of subjects who thought they were going to be tested on a topic.
Relate
We should akso know how the things we have learned are related.
Concept map is perhaps a very effective tool for this.
Other important effective tool is analogy.
Rethink
The author also warned us about the expert blind spot, the fluency heuristic, the illusion of explanatory depth:
The more we know, the more we think we know. In this sense, a little bit of knowledge is more than figuratively dangerous.
If an idea or fact comes easily to us—or we've just come across it a lot—people are far more likely to think that we know something about it, even if we don't.
Since there is forgetting curve, we should always devote some time from time to time to revisit those ideas, that we have learned.
This is a very good book on what current research in human learning has known so far. I highly recommend it !
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I'd recommend this book if you're new to the topic.
At first I thought that this book was pretty good. Then, I realized that the entire book was mainly going to be summaries of studies over and over. I liked when the author used his own stories as examples. What really got me, though, was the massive--and I mean massive--number of errors in the book. Missing words galore. It was almost comical. How did it go to press in this condition??I'd recommend this book if you're new to the topic.
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Cons: interviews and anecdotes throughout the book often seemed only tangentially related to the point argued
• Value – It's impossible to learn if we don't want to learn, and to gain expertise, we have to see skills and knowledge as valuable. What's more, we have to create meaning. Learning is a matter of making sense of something.
• Target – In the early part of gaining mastery, focus is key. We need to figure out exactly what we want to learn and set goals and targets.
• Develop – Some forms of practice make people more perfect than others. In this stage of learning, people need to 6 forms of learning:
• Value – It's impossible to learn if we don't want to learn, and to gain expertise, we have to see skills and knowledge as valuable. What's more, we have to create meaning. Learning is a matter of making sense of something.
• Target – In the early part of gaining mastery, focus is key. We need to figure out exactly what we want to learn and set goals and targets.
• Develop – Some forms of practice make people more perfect than others. In this stage of learning, people need to hone their skills and take dedicated steps to improve performance.
• Extend – At this point, we want to go beyond the basics – and apply what we know. We want to flesh out our skills and knowledge to create more meaningful forms of understanding.
• Relate – This is the phase where we see how it all fits together. After all, we don't want to know just a dingle detail or procedure-we want to know how that detail or procedure interacts with other facts and procedures.
• Rethink – When it comes to learning, it's easy to make mistakes, to be overconfident, and so we need to review our knowledge, reconsider our understanding, and learn from our learning.
When it comes to learning, this idea is crucial. Motivation is the first step in acquiring any sort of skill. It's hard to learn something if we don't see any meaning in it. Value drives motivation.
Hulleman and his colleagues aimed to help students find value in data tools (stats): asked questions like, can you see yourself using statistics in your life. Can you imagine using stats in your career as a nurse, salesperson, or manager. Then students wrote a two page paper essays detailing answers. The outcomes were clear. By drawing a connecting between stats and their lives, the students became much more motivated in their studies, in some cases jumping a whole letter grade. In essence, explaining why statistics mattered to them – in their future careers – improved learning.
Videogame Minecraft is an interesting case study. When programmer Markus Persson launched the online game years ago, few believed that the program would succeed. After all, the game had no dramatic car chases, or displays of daring do. In Minecraft, there are not even points to figure out who is the winner. Instead, the online games provides people with building blocks and allows them to create whatever they want in the online world. Using square blocks, people can build sprawling castles, the Eifel Tower, this is your game. Despite convential wisdom, Minecraft has become one of the most popular games ever produced. There are more than 100 million users around the world, and Minecraft has outsold Tetris, Mario, and even Call of Duty. Why? Because the program makes it simple to create something relevant and find a personal sense of meaning.
Some high school teachers have taken up learn crafting. Students in St. Andrews Episcopal School are allowed the choice in how they'll demonstrate their learning, from taking a convential exam to creating a video. Teens at school will most often opt in to create some sort of independent project to show off their skills and knowledge, even though it can take 3-4 more times much work as taking a traditional test. They see a lot of meaning, relevance and ownership.
The best forms of learning are active learning activities like self quizzing and self explaining. To learn we are not just copying the information, we're making sense out of facts.
Long term memory is rooted in links instead of features, in systems instead of facts, and so like a diviner, like a walking data analyzer, they can look past the surface features of problem and identify core issues.
One approach about learning a new topic is to write down what you know about it. For example, honing grilling skills, make a note like: choose steaks with a bit of fat, high heat works best, use tongs, not a fork, so meat stays juicy. By probing ourselves before we gain a bit of expertise, we're priming our metacognitive pump-and making our learning more durable.
When people learn, they need to learn to cope with negative feelings. Am I good enough? Will I fail? What if I'm wrong? Isn't there something else that I'd rather be doing. Emotions can quickly rob us of our ability to gain expertise. They disrupt our short term memory. While some of these feelings are typical, too many of them and you'll get totally wiped out.
Give feedback on feedback.
If developing skills begin with feedback, then we are bound to struggle. People will inevitable flounder, after all getting feedback is about discovering what you are doing wrong.
In the bluntest of terms, there is simply no such thing as effortless learning. To develop a skill, we're going to be uncomfortable, strained, and often feeling a little embattled.
People often live up to labels they often give themselves.
If you are working on a tough problem, as yourself what if questions. What if we had more time. What if we had more people. What if we had more resources. The answers are often provocative and shed light on how a problem comes together as a system.
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Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30038905-learn-better
