This course gives you easy access to the invaluable learning techniques used by experts in art, music, literature, math, science, sports, and many other disciplines. We’ll learn about the how the brain uses two very different learning modes and how it encapsulates (“chunks”) information. We’ll also cover illusions of learning, memory techniques, dealing with procrastination, and best practices shown by research to be most effective in helping you master tough subjects.
Using these approaches, no matter what your skill levels in topics you would like to master, you can change your thinking and change your life. If you’re already an expert, this peep under the mental hood will give you ideas for: turbocharging successful learning, including counter-intuitive test-taking tips and insights that will help you make the best use of your time on homework and problem sets. If you’re struggling, you’ll see a structured treasure trove of practical techniques that walk you through what you need to do to get on track. If you’ve ever wanted to become better at anything, this course will help serve as your guide.
This course can be taken independent of, concurrent with, or prior to, its companion course, Mindshift. (Learning How to Learn is more learning focused, and Mindshift is more career focused.)
To join the fully translated Portuguese version of the course, visit: https://www.coursera.org/learn/aprender
To join the fully translated Spanish version of the course, visit: https://www.coursera.org/learn/aprendiendo-a-aprender
To join the fully translated Chinese version of the course, visit: https://www.coursera.org/learn/ruhe-xuexi
À partir de la leçon
Chunking
In this module, we’re going to be talking about chunks. Chunks are compact packages of information that your mind can easily access. We’ll talk about how you can form chunks, how you can use them to improve your understanding and creativity with the material, and how chunks can help you to do better on tests. We’ll also explore illusions of competence in learning, the challenges of overlearning, and the advantages of interleaving.
Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning, McMaster University Professor of Engineering, Industrial & Systems Engineering, Oakland University
Dr. Terrence Sejnowski
Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies Computational Neurobiology Laboratory
Linda Walker
When you're learning a new idea, for example a new vocabulary word or
a new concept or a new problem solving approach,
you sometimes tend to practice it over and over again during the same study session.
A little of this is useful and necessary, but continuing to study or
practice after you've mastered what you can in the session is called overlearning.
Overleaning can have its place.
It can produce an automaticity that can be important when you're
executing a serve in tennis or a perfect piano concerto.
If you choke on tests or public speaking, overlearning can be especially valuable.
Did you know that even expert public speakers practice on the order
of 70 hours for a typical 20-minute TED Talk?
Automaticity can indeed be helpful in times of nervousness, but
be wary of repetitive overlearning during a single session.
Research has shown it can be a waste of valuable learning time.
The reality is, once you've got the basic idea down during a session,
continuing to hammer away at it during the same session doesn't strengthen the kinds
of long term memory connections you want to have strengthened.
Worse yet, focusing on one technique is a little like learning carpentry
by only practicing with a hammer.
After awhile you think you can fix anything by just bashing at it.
Using a subsequent study session to repeat what you're trying to learn is just fine
and often valuable.
It can strengthen and deepen your chunked neuron patterns.
But be wary; repeating something you already know perfectly well,
is, face it, easy.
It can also bring the illusion of competence that you've mastered the full
range of material, when you've actually only mastered the easy stuff.
Instead, you want to balance your studies by deliberately focusing on
what you find more difficult.
This focusing on the more difficult material is called deliberate practice.
It's often what makes the difference between a good student and
a great student.
All this is also related to a concept known as Einstellung.
In this phenomenon, your initial simple thought, an idea
you already have in mind or a neural pattern you've already developed and
strengthened, may prevent a better idea or solution from being found.
We saw this in the focus pinball picture,
where your initial pinball of thought went to the upper part of the brain,
but the solution thought pattern was in the lower part.
The crowded bumpers of the focus mode and
the previous patterns you built can create a sort of rut
that prevents you from springing to a new place where the solution might be found.
Incidentally, the German word einstellung means mindset.
Basically you can remember einstellung as installing a roadblock
because of the way you were initially looking at something.
This kind of wrong approach is especially easy to do in sports and
science, not to mention other disciplines, because sometimes your initial
intuition about what's happening or what you need to be doing is misleading.
You have to unlearn your erroneous older ideas or
approaches even while you're learning new ones.
One significant mistake students sometimes make
in learning is jumping into the water before they learn to swim.
In other words, they blindly start working on homework without reading the text book,
attending lectures, viewing online lessons, or
even speaking with someone knowledgeable.
This is a recipe for sinking.
It's like randomly allowing a thought to, kind of pop off in the focus mode pinball
machine, without paying any real attention to where the solution truly lies.
Understanding how to obtain real solutions is important in learning and in life.
Mastering a new subject means learning not only the basic chunks, but
also learning how to select and use different chunks.
The best way to learn that is by practicing jumping back and forth between
problems or situations that require different techniques or strategies.
This is called interleaving.
Once you have the basic idea of the technique down during your study session,
sort of like learning to ride a bike with training wheels,
start interleaving your practice with problems of different types or
different types of approaches, concepts, procedures.
Sometimes this can be a little tough to do.
A given section in a book, for
example, is often devoted to a specific technique, so when you flip
to that section you already know which technique you're going to be using.
Still, do what you can to mix up your learning.
In science and math in particular it can help to look ahead at the more
varied problem sets that are sometimes found at the end of chapters.
Or you can deliberately try to make yourself occasionally
pick out why some problems call for one technique as opposed to another.
You want your brain to become used to the idea that just knowing how to use
a particular concept, approach, or problem-solving technique isn't enough.
You also need to know when to use it.
Interleaving your studies, making it a point to review for a test,
for example, by skipping around through problems in the different chapters and
materials can sometimes seem to make your learning a little more difficult, but
in reality, it helps you learn more deeply.
Interleaving is extraordinarily important.
Although practice and
repetition is important in helping build solid neural patterns to draw on,
it's interleaving that starts building flexibility and creativity.
It's where you leave the world of practice and repetition, and
begin thinking more independently.
When you interleave within one subject or one discipline,
you begin to develop your creative power within that discipline.
When you interleave between several subjects or disciplines,
you can more easily make interesting new connections between
chunks in the different fields, which can enhance your creativity even further.
Of course it takes time to develop solid chunks of knowledge in different fields,
so sometimes there's a trade off.
Developing expertise in several fields
means you can bring very new ideas from one field to the other, but
it can also mean that your expertise in one field or the other
isn't quite as deep as that of the person who specializes in only one discipline.
On the other hand, if you develop expertise in only one discipline,
you may know it very deeply but you may become more deeply entrenched
in your familiar way of thinking and not be able to handle new ideas.
Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn discovered that most
paradigm shifts in science are brought about either young people or
people who were originally trained in a different discipline.
They're not so
easily trapped by einstellung, blocked thoughts due to their preceding training.
And of course there's the old saying that science progresses one funeral at a time
as people entrenched in the old ways of looking at things die off.
Finally, don't make the mistake of thinking that learning
only occurs in the kinds of subjects you acquire from teachers or books.
When you teach a child how to deal effectively with a bully, or
you fix a leaky faucet, or you quickly pack a small suitcase for a business trip
to Hong Kong, all of these illustrate the outcomes of important aspects of learning.
Physicist Richard Feynman was inspired in his Nobel Prize-winning work
by watching someone throw a dinner plate into the air in a cafeteria.
Mike Rowe of the television shows Dirty Jobs and
Somebody's Gotta Do It shows how important and
exciting learning can be in a variety of different, non-academic disciplines.
I'm Barbara Oakley.
Thanks for learning about learning.
Explorer notre catalogue
Rejoignez-nous gratuitement et obtenez des recommendations, des mises à jour et des offres personnalisées.
Dr. Barbara OakleyRamón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning, McMaster University
Dr. Terrence SejnowskiFrancis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Linda Walker
