Learning How to Learn

Learn the basics of how the brain works to learn more easily and be less frustrated.

The course has 4 modules over 4 weeks.

Information

Source: coursera.org
Speaker: Barbara Oakley, Terrence Sejnowski
Basis: "A Mind for Numbers" by Barbara Oakley
- the book formed the basis for this MOOC
- audible audio or paper/ebook

Course Videos

You'll gain insight into how we learn by using a variety of different approaches, ranging from personal stories, to insights from cognitive psychology, to an examination of deep neuroscience.

Course Activities

In-video Quizzes
Graded Quiz in each Module
Peer-evaluated assignments (optional)

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, we expect you to be able to do the following:

Explain the difference between focused and diffuse modes of thinking.
Explain what a chunk is, and how and why you can and should enhance your chunking skills.
Explain how working memory and long term memory differ from one another.
Describe key techniques to help students learn most efficiently such as:
- the Pomodoro
- metaphor
- story
- visualization
- deliberate practice
- interleaving
Describe actions that hinder students from learning most effectively, such as:
- procrastination
- over-learning
- Einstellung
- choking
- multi-tasking
- illusions of learning
- lack of sleep
Describe the most important aspects of proper test preparation.
Explain the importance of “mindset” in learning.

Video 1: Introduction to the Focused and Diffuse modes

There are 4 papers referenced at the end of this video.

Two Different Modes of Thinking.

The focused and diffuse modes of thinking are fundamentally different.

Focused Mode of Thinking
- Focusing: concentrate intently on what you are trying to understand
Diffuse Mode of Thinking
- Relaxed: related to a set of neural resting states

Metaphor and analogy are very helpful when learning something new.

Analogy: Pinball Game

Think of the brain as an array of pinball bumpers.

The focused mode has mamy, tightly packed bumpers. The diffuse mode has fewer, broadly spaced bumpers.

The path of a ball between a number of bumpers is a familiar way of thinking.

If you haven't thought a thought before, how will you know the path of the ball? How will you get the ball to the new thought pattern?

As far as neural scientists know right now, you are either in focused or diffuse mode of thinking. You can see one side of the coin, or the other, but not both at the same time. Being in one mode limits your access to the other mode of thinking.

Video 2: Introduction to the Course Structure

Goal: Reframe how you think about learning.

The course is especially useful for learning math and science.

Experts from many professions who give tips about learning.

You will see how you can fool yourself about whether you actually know the material.

Discover new ways to hold your focus and embed the material more deeply and powerfully in your mind.

Condense key ideas you are learning about so you can grasp them more easily.

Master the simple approaches outlined here, including simple tips to help prevent procrastination, and you'll be able to learn more effectively and with less frustration.

Video 3: sing the Focused and Diffuse Modes--Or, a Little Dali will do You

Your mind needs to go back and forth between the two learning modes, that's what makes you learn effectively.

Analogy: Lifting weights. You can't work out like a fiend the day before a weightlifting competition. Neural structure is like a muscle, gradually grow a neural scaffold to hang your thinking on.

Learning something difficult takes time.

Salvador Dali - the very definition of "a wild and crazy guy"

Thomas Edison - One of the most brilliant inventors ever

Dali's technique

Relax in a chair and let his mind go free.
Dangle a key in his hand just above the floor.
And just as he drifted into his dreams, falling asleep he would drop the key, waking himself up.
Just in time to gather the diffuse mode connections and ideas in his mind
And back he would go into the focused mode, bringing with him the new connections he made in the diffuse mode

Edison Technique

According to legend...

Relax in his chair, holding ball-bearings in his hand
His mind would run free and noodle back in a relaxed way to what he would focus on
The ball bearings drop and clatter to the ground - same as Dali
He is awakened! Off he would go with his ideas in the diffuse mode, ready to build on them in the focused mode

Week 1: What is Learning?

Some Context

Brain weighs 3 lbs. Consumes 10x more energy by weight than rest of body.
Most complex device in the known universe.
We are not consciously aware of how our brains work. Brains evolved to help us navigate complex environments. Most of heavy lifting is below consciousness.
Surprised to find out that running, reaching, seeing, hearing are much more complex problems than we thought (than chess and math) and still out of the reach of raw computer processing.
Much of heavy lifting below the level of consciousness and we don't need to know how it's done to survive
We are only aware of a tiny fraction of events in the mind
There are areas of the brain that are active during focused states, and other areas of the brain that are active during resting states.
Brain connectivity is dynamic and remains so even after it matures. New synapses form and others disappear.
How do memories remain stable over so many years?
Viewing a dendritic branch on a neuron. After learning and sleep the dendrite has new synapses.
Synapses < 1 micron diameter; human hair is 20 microns diameter. Near the limit of light microscopy.
You are not the same person you were after a nap or night sleep. Upgrade!
Shakespeare: Macbeth laments insomnia, sleep knits up your experiences into the tapestry of your life story.
Check out www.brainfacts.org.
There are a million billion synapses in the brain.

There are references at the end of the video.

Introductory Quiz Notes

There is a coursera mobile app...

10,000

Video: A procrastination Preview

Trent on 10+10 Rules of Studying

Recalling what you just read is a validation test. You can verify the work product of your reading. The work product is that you learned the material.
Another major plug for flashcards and spaced repetition. Maybe I should just keep a paper system of mixed flashcards that I can rebase as neeed. Electronic ones are not working.
Use outside resources early and often. Identify helpful people and don't waste your time on people that aren't successful at teaching you.
Airplane Mode: Every text message pulls up the roots of your attempt to learn.
Sleep is the foundation of learning and survival.

10 Rules of Studying

These rules form a synthesis of some of the main ideas of the course--they are excerpted from the book A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel in Math and Science (Even if You Flunked Algebra), by Barbara Oakley, Penguin, July, 2014. Feel free to copy these rules and redistribute them, as long as you keep the original wording and this citation.

10 Rules of Good Studying

Use recall. After you read a page, look away and recall the main ideas. Highlight very little, and never highlight anything you haven’t put in your mind first by recalling. Try recalling main ideas when you are walking to class or in a different room from where you originally learned it. An ability to recall—to generate the ideas from inside yourself—is one of the key indicators of good learning.
Test yourself. On everything. All the time. Flash cards are your friend.
Chunk your problems. Chunking is understanding and practicing with a problem solution so that it can all come to mind in a flash. After you solve a problem, rehearse it. Make sure you can solve it cold—every step. Pretend it’s a song and learn to play it over and over again in your mind, so the information combines into one smooth chunk you can pull up whenever you want.
Space your repetition. Spread out your learning in any subject a little every day, just like an athlete. Your brain is like a muscle—it can handle only a limited amount of exercise on one subject at a time.
Alternate different problem-solving techniques during your practice. Never practice too long at any one session using only one problem-solving technique—after a while, you are just mimicking what you did on the previous problem. Mix it up and work on different types of problems. This teaches you both how and when to use a technique. (Books generally are not set up this way, so you’ll need to do this on your own.) After every assignment and test, go over your errors, make sure you understand why you made them, and then rework your solutions. To study most effectively, handwrite (don’t type) a problem on one side of a flash card and the solution on the other. (Handwriting builds stronger neural structures in memory than typing.) You might also photograph the card if you want to load it into a study app on your smartphone. Quiz yourself randomly on different types of problems. Another way to do this is to randomly flip through your book, pick out a problem, and see whether you can solve it cold.
Take breaks. It is common to be unable to solve problems or figure out concepts in math or science the first time you encounter them. This is why a little study every day is much better than a lot of studying all at once. When you get frustrated with a math or science problem, take a break so that another part of your mind can take over and work in the background.
Use explanatory questioning and simple analogies. Whenever you are struggling with a concept, think to yourself, How can I explain this so that a ten-year-old could understand it? Using an analogy really helps, like saying that the flow of electricity is like the flow of water. Don’t just think your explanation—say it out loud or put it in writing. The additional effort of speaking and writing allows you to more deeply encode (that is, convert into neural memory structures) what you are learning.
Focus. Turn off all interrupting beeps and alarms on your phone and computer, and then turn on a timer for twenty-five minutes. Focus intently for those twenty-five minutes and try to work as diligently as you can. After the timer goes off, give yourself a small, fun reward. A few of these sessions in a day can really move your studies forward. Try to set up times and places where studying—not glancing at your computer or phone—is just something you naturally do.
Eat your frogs first. Do the hardest thing earliest in the day, when you are fresh.
Make a mental contrast. Imagine where you’ve come from and contrast that with the dream of where your studies will take you. Post a picture or words in your workspace to remind you of your dream. Look at that when you find your motivation lagging. This work will pay off both for you and those you love!

10 Rules of Bad Studying

Excerpted from A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel in Math and Science (Even if You Flunked Algebra), by Barbara Oakley, Penguin, July, 2014

Avoid these techniques—they can waste your time even while they fool you into thinking you’re learning!

Passive rereading—sitting passively and running your eyes back over a page. Unless you can prove that the material is moving into your brain by recalling the main ideas without looking at the page, rereading is a waste of time.
Letting highlights overwhelm you. Highlighting your text can fool your mind into thinking you are putting something in your brain, when all you’re really doing is moving your hand. A little highlighting here and there is okay—sometimes it can be helpful in flagging important points. But if you are using highlighting as a memory tool, make sure that what you mark is also going into your brain.
Merely glancing at a problem’s solution and thinking you know how to do it. This is one of the worst errors students make while studying. You need to be able to solve a problem step-by-step, without looking at the solution.
Waiting until the last minute to study. Would you cram at the last minute if you were practicing for a track meet? Your brain is like a muscle—it can handle only a limited amount of exercise on one subject at a time.
Repeatedly solving problems of the same type that you already know how to solve. If you just sit around solving similar problems during your practice, you’re not actually preparing for a test—it’s like preparing for a big basketball game by just practicing your dribbling.
Letting study sessions with friends turn into chat sessions. Checking your problem solving with friends, and quizzing one another on what you know, can make learning more enjoyable, expose flaws in your thinking, and deepen your learning. But if your joint study sessions turn to fun before the work is done, you’re wasting your time and should find another study group.
Neglecting to read the textbook before you start working problems. Would you dive into a pool before you knew how to swim? The textbook is your swimming instructor—it guides you toward the answers. You will flounder and waste your time if you don’t bother to read it. Before you begin to read, however, take a quick glance over the chapter or section to get a sense of what it’s about.
Not checking with your instructors or classmates to clear up points of confusion. Professors are used to lost students coming in for guidance—it’s our job to help you. The students we worry about are the ones who don’t come in. Don’t be one of those students.
Thinking you can learn deeply when you are being constantly distracted. Every tiny pull toward an instant message or conversation means you have less brain power to devote to learning. Every tug of interrupted attention pulls out tiny neural roots before they can grow.
Not getting enough sleep. Your brain pieces together problem-solving techniques when you sleep, and it also practices and repeats whatever you put in mind before you go to sleep. Prolonged fatigue allows toxins to build up in the brain that disrupt the neural connections you need to think quickly and well. If you don’t get a good sleep before a test, NOTHING ELSE YOU HAVE DONE WILL MATTER.