I recently completed Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects, which is an excellent free offering from Coursera. It is a series of videos with quiz and essay requirements and is taught by Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski.
So far, I have recommended this course to quite a few people and I will continue to recommend it to others in the future. It is so brilliant and insightful. I genuinely liked it a lot, and learned quite a bit from it.
For those of you that would like to know more about this I will sum it up. Essentially, all those things they taught you in school are true, but now they have the hard science.
- Sleep is of paramount importance to learning as your brain cells actually shrink while you sleep as your brain flushes toxins and strengthens neural connections made during the day.
- Practicing or studying a little bit every day is far more effective than trying to learn a lot all at once. Spreading it out over time results in much better retention overall.
- When attacking a difficult problem, it helps to utilize both the focused and diffuse modes of thinking. Focused mode is deliberately concentrating on a solution. Diffuse mode is when you let your mind wander a bit, letting the focus level drop, which allows more distant parts of your brain to make connections that would not happen in focused mode.
It's this diffuse mode of thinking that causes those a-ha! moments long after you've gone home for the day.
For those of you that like to learn, or have to learn, or just want to watch something interesting, I can't recommend this course enough. Check it out!
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