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What I learned in Learning How to Learn

Based on Coursera Course: Learning How to Learn (August, 2014)

Professors of UCSD: Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski

This powerpoint is put together by Dona Hsieh

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Three Key Topics

  • Focused and diffuse modes of thinking
  • Illusions of learning
  • Sleep

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Focused & diffuse modes of thinking

What are they?

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Focused mode

  • Almost everyone know what focused mode is –

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    • Trying to solve a math problem.
    • Working on an excel spreadsheet with thousands of rows.
    • Programming for an application.
    • Reading a book.

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But what is diffuse mode?

    • It happens when you’re relax, for example
      • Walking
      • Taking a shower
      • Falling asleep
      • Daydreaming

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Diffuse mode – it is thinking when our brains are in a resting state

Images: alloveralbany.com & pixabay.com For non-commercial resue

Think of your brain as a supermarket with many aisles, it’s like shopping in one with very few customers, the aisles are wide and clear, no one is really in your way, you can go pick up all sorts of different items you may or may not need, and zigzag through different aisles with ease. You can even skateboard there!

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Diffuse mode – who thinks like that? > We all do!

  • Brilliant inventor, Thomas Edison, used to sit and relax in his chair, holding ball bearings in his hand. He would relax away letting his mind run free, when Edison would fall asleep, the ball bearings would drop and clatter to the ground to wake him and off he’d go with his ideas from the diffused mode, ready to take them into the focused mode and build on them.

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Focused & diffuse modes-bottom-line

  • When learning something new or something difficult, your mind needs to be able to go back and forth between the two different learning modes to cover the kind of learning that will stay with you. It’s like muscle training, practice often so your muscle has time to grow. Your brain’s neuro structure will grow too if you would do a little work every day.

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Illusions of learning

What are they?

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Common mistakes we made

  • Passive reading
  • Repetition in reading
  • Highlighting many passages or keywords
  • Looking at the solution and thinking that you understand how to solve it without actually trying to solve it first.

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Why don’t these methods help?

  • Because we are not mindless robots
  • Simply reading passively is not deep learning
  • It won’t help us form chunk that is the memory chain of knowledge & know-how which we have familiarity and deep understanding.

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How can we learn better?

  • Recall the main idea
  • Tell it to your peers, brothers, sisters, or your parents
    • Because we often discover things that are not clear to us when we try to explain to others.
    • Your brain makes a strong connection when you verbalize your knowledge.
  • Handwrite notes in your own words
    • Research shows that learning retention is better when compare to keyboard input.
  • Test yourself or better yet study with a group and test each other
    • It will strengthen your grasp of the material.
    • Try in different settings, locations other than the classroom where you learn the materials from. This can train your brain to be flexible enough and be independent to the environment effect.

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10 Rules of Good Studying

  1. Use recall
  2. Test yourself
  3. Chunk your problems
  4. Space your repetition
  5. Alternate different problem-solving techniques during your practice
  6. Take breaks
  7. Use explanatory questioning and simple analogies
  8. Focus
  9. Eat your frogs first (tackle the difficult subject first)
  10. Make a mental contrast

Excerpted from A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley

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10 Rules of Bad Studying

  1. Passive rereading
  2. Too many highlights
  3. Merely glancing at a problem’s solution and thinking you know how to do it.
  4. Waiting until the last minute to study
  5. Repeatedly solving problems of the same type that you already know how to solve.
  6. Letting study sessions with friends turn into chat sessions
  7. Neglecting to read the textbook before you start working problems.
  8. Not checking with your instructors or classmates to clear up points of confusion.
  9. Thinking you can learn deeply when you are being constantly distracted.
  10. Not getting enough sleep (NOTHING ELSE YOU HAVE DONE WILL MATTER).

Excerpted from A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley

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Sleep

How does it help us learn?

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A little bit about our brains

  • A human brain has roughly 100 trillion synapses
  • New synapses are being formed and others disappearing.
  • Synapse is one micro in diameter – basically about 1/20 of a strand of human hair in thickness.

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Is sleep a total waste of time?

  • Absolutely not!
  • Did you ever find yourself being able to untangle certain problems during sleep and woke up with a solution the next day?
  • It’s like your brain goes into a diffuse mode naturally and figure things out without you deliberately thinking about it.
  • Trust your brain to work on pulling many different aspects of information to help you make a better judgment.
  • Perhaps that’s why people say “sleep on it” when you have a difficult decision to be made.

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Want to stay sharp for your test? Sleep!

  • I’m not talking about not to study!
  • Sleep is so important that it drives metabolite clearance from the adult brain.
  • It’s like cleaning the drainage full of debris after the rain, so it can flow again.
  • In research of mice’s brains, scientists found the brain cells shrunk in sleep which provides wider pathways for fluid to flush away toxin in their brains, namely beta amyloid which is the harmful substance that partly contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.
  • So in order for the brain to perform normally, you must get enough sleep.
  • Your brain needs clear pathways to recall knowledge and to make connections.

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Want to stay mentally sharp?

  • Exercise - it help us retain newly formed synapses a bit longer, so yoga, walk, jog, tai-chi, they can do wonders to our brains!

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Conclusion

  • Now we know a bit more about how our brain works in terms of learning.
  • We can take advantage by employing some of the techniques for example - not wasting time in passive rereading.
  • Or actively recall the main points to ourselves, friends, or relatives.
  • Most importantly, get enough sleep! If you don’t, no matter how hard you study, you brain will not function effectively.

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Credits

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