Learning How To Learn

This is a forum post to teach you how to learn the most efficient and fast way, many of us students while we have been studying for years still struggle with learning some subjects or all at times but we don't really look into trying to change the way we learn, a while ago I enrolled in a free short course online that I will link at the end of the post, this post is basically a summary of that course and I thought to share it so we all can learn better!

Diffused mode and Focus mode

Researchers have found that we have two fundamentally different modes of thinking. These are called diffused mode and focus mode. We're familiar with focusing. It's when you concentrate intently on something you're trying to learn or to understand. But we're not so familiar with diffuse thinking. Turns out that this more relaxed thinking style is related to a set of neural resting states. Now as far as neuroscientists know right now, you're either in the focused mode or the diffuse mode of thinking. It seems you can't be in both thinking modes at the same time. When you're learning something new, especially something that's a little more difficult, your mind needs to be able to go back and forth between the two different learning modes. That's what helps you learn effectively. You might think of it as a bit analogous to building your strength by lifting weights. You would never plan to compete in a weightlifting competition by waiting until the very day before a meet and then spending that entire day working out like a fiend. I mean, it just doesn't happen that way. To gain muscular structure, you need to do a little work every day, gradually allowing your muscles to grow. Similarly, to build neuro-structure, you need to do a little work every day, gradually allowing yourself to grow a neuro-scaffold to hang your thinking on, a little bit every day and that's the trick. Read or hear this in detail by clicking on the following hyperlinked texts:

Introduction to focused and diffused thinking

Using the focused or diffused mode

Chunk

When you first look at a brand new concept it sometimes doesn't make much sense. Chunking is the mental leap that helps you unite bits of information together through meaning. The new logical whole makes the chunk easier to remember, and also makes it easier to fit the chunk into the larger picture of what you're learning. Just memorizing a fact without understanding or context doesn't help you understand what's really going on or how the concept fits together with other concepts you're learning.

Forming A Chunk

If you're learning to play a difficult song on the guitar, the neural representation of the song in your mind can be considered as a rather large chunk. You would first listen to the song. Maybe you'd even watch someone else playing the song especially if you were just a beginner who was learning things like, how to hold the guitar. Getting an initial sense of the pattern you want to master for yourself is similar for most subjects or skills. You often have to grasp little bits of songs that become neuro mini-chunks, which will later join together into larger chunks. For example, over several days, you might learn how to smoothly place the musical passages on a guitar, and when you've grasped those passages, you could join them together with other passages that you've learned, gradually putting everything together so you can play the song. Learning in math and science involves the same approach. When you're learning new math and science material, you're often given sample problems with worked out solutions. This is because, when you're first trying to understand how to work a problem, you have a heavy cognitive load. So it helps to start out with a work through the example. In summary, there are the following steps to forming a chunk

1) The first step on chunking is simply to focus your undivided attention on the information you want to chunk. If you had the television going on in the background, or you're looking up every few minutes to check or answer your phone or computer messages, it means you're going to have more difficulty in making a chunk, because your brain is not really focusing on chunking the new material.

2)The second step in chunking is to understand the basic idea you're trying to chunk, whether it's understanding a concept such as continental drift, seeing the connection between the basic elements of the plot for a story, grasping the economic principle of supply and demand, or comprehending the essence of a particular type of math problem Understanding is like a superglue that helps hold the underlying memory traces together. It creates broad encompassing traces that can link to other memory traces.

3)In math and science related subjects, closing the book and testing yourself on whether you, yourself, can solve the problem you think you understand, will speed up your learning at this stage. You often realize the first time you actually understand something is when you can actually do it yourself. It's the same in many disciplines, just looking at someone else's painting doesn't mean you could actually create that painting yourself

4) gaining context, so you can see not just how, but also when to use this chunk. Context means going beyond the initial problem and seeing more broadly, repeating and practising with both related and unrelated problems, so that you can see not only when to use the chunk, but when not to use it. This helps you see how your newly formed chunk fits into the bigger picture. In other words, you may have a tool in your strategy or problem-solving tool box, but if you don't know when to use that tool, it's not going to do you a lot of good. Doing a rapid two-minute picture walk through a chapter in a book before you begin studying it, glancing at pictures and section headings, can allow you to gain a sense of the big picture. So can listening to a very well organized lecture.

Summary of the summary: chunks are best built with focused attention, understanding of the basic idea, and practice to help you gain mastery and a sense of the big picture context. Those are the essential steps in making a chunk and fitting that chunk into a greater conceptual overview of what you're learning.

Resource: https://goo.gl/ZxwDnf