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How does one learn how to learn?
I'm quite a few years out of highschool, and recently went back to school.
I'm enjoying the environment (weekends and sometimes online), which was one of my biggest worries, because I tried doing more school right after high-school and it did my head in.
However, I'm struggling with actually learning the more dry stuff. For a few of the courses there's stuff to calculate, there's problems to solve and such, and I can get that to stick and not dread doing it.
That is not the case with the very dry legal things... how do I learn stuff like that? Any tips? Because right now I'm looking at basically trying to brute-force it by hoping to be lucky and re-re-re-reading the entire book hoping the right stuff sticks for the exam.
First, this is a huge question with a ton of different answers. I'll give one, but this is not the only thing to consider; other people learn in other ways.
What is learning? Typically we often think of having learned something as being able to memorize it and recall it when it is needed. This leads us to "what is memorization" and even "what is memory". In general, there are a few stages of memory - sensory, short-term, long-term. Sensory is kind of like RAM - it's like the initial experience, or just after the initial experience. Short-term memory is holding onto something for a longer time, but still not forever; on the order of minutes. Long-term memory is holding onto something for a much longer period of time - months / years / forever. We think of something as "learned" when it is successfully stored in our long-term memory.
How can I put something in long-term memory? There are a variety of things that people do to move short-term memories into long-term storage.
Those are all activities that help move things from short to long term memory. There are things that help with each of these activities:
This is all very intro level but is an outline of the sorts of things that can help you to learn.
Thank you for the reply!
Writing things down was my semi-brute force technique for theory-heavy classes in high-school, will probably go back to this, it did work! Maybe mix it up with Flash cards... making my own via writing the questions and answers down will also help, I bet
This is just personal experience. But there's two main types of learning: memorization, and performance. Neither is better or worse, they're somewhat discrete categories.
For memorization, spaced repetition is the way to go. Something like Anki is free and extensible. Flash cards work, but Anki's algorithm is more intelligent than just round robin.
For performance, IMO the best way is something along the lines of this video on learning to draw. But it's about 1. isolating an specific area where you want to improve 2. finding a "master" at it 3. observing what they do 4. introspection and improvement 5. repeat
As an example, say you want to improve your ability to write induction proofs in mathematics. You can find videos of people doing induction proofs (or watch your professor or TA do it in a lecture). You try to repeat what they did without directly referencing it. At the end, succeed or failure, you inspect what you did, and note down ways you can improve. Now try it again.
Thank you for the reply!
My main issue is that it's pure legal stuff. Nothing to deduce or even be interested in, just a big chunk of dry information.
I've never liked repetition.
The thing that works for me is rewording the material in a way that makes sense to me, and explaining it to someone else as simply as possible. Think of unexpected analogies and explore where they break down.
Try to stay curious - if anything that catches your attention, feel free to go down the rabbit hole for 20 minutes. If you're the kind of person who enjoys understanding how things work fundamentally, embrace it.
If you can volunteer to be a tutor for other students, that's a great opportunity to test yourself. They'll ask questions that you might not be able to answer, and you'll have a reason to dig deeper.
There is actually a free Coursera course by a professor who does a fairly good job at explaining some of the better strategies for learning. It's called "Learning How to Learn" and can be found here. I recommend it.
Personally I have always found spaced repetition, mnemonics, and teaching others / designing resources to teach others to be the most effective.
Trying to hook anything you're trying to learn to a memorable life event also tends to help, though this is harder to do organically. The only reason I know the German words Abschussbasis, Schraubenziehereinsätze, and Trageflügelboot (as examples) are because I remember having vivid conversations with people about these words.
I came here to post that exact same course. Even though my years of exams and education are well in the past, I still learned a lot from it. Not just the techniques you mention, but also the simple models, like the pinball machine with "focus" and "diffuse". "Diffusing" is actually a well-understood word in this household because we all took the course and use it regularly.
I might need to save this course for the summer as it could help with my final year of uni.
I've found flashcard programs with multiple choice questions great for memorizing stuff I otherwise don't care about. Instead of needing to force myself to read a boring thing, I just sit and try to get the questions right until I've memorized all the questions and answers. Getting a right answer is fun. And once I know all the answers, I've memorized the information.
There are a couple of apps specifically for the stuff I'm learning, but it's not multiple choice - I agree, multiple choice is amazing... I'll have to see about other apps
Repetition is it, mostly! This is how I handle memorising bits of information I can't rationalise my way around. For instance, for citizenship tests, driving tests, or highly theoretical law tests in uni, I would take mock tests over and over, and I'd find that I would be able to remember some oddly specific details.
Same goes for things such as flash cards, I try to catch a glimpse of it, and see how much of it I can memorise in one go. Then I keep going over the same weak spots until I can quickly memorise the most crucial bits, and deduce the other ones from that.
Mnemonics also help, you will probably have to come up with your own, but that's how I do it with languages. Like little songs to remember the sine/cos/tan of 30/45/60 degrees.
The more you're able to "deduce" without memorising it, the better. Once again, sine of 90 degrees is 1, because sine is opposite over hypotenuse, and a 90 degree angle makes a square, so that's 1/1. You're not as quick to get to the result, but it's way easier to remember, and you have a fuller grasp of what you're trying to learn.
Best of luck, though! Sure you'll smash it
I've found that the best way that I personally learn is by teaching it to someone else. This can be a real person that you teach things too (like a friend or fellow classmate or significant other) or it can be an imaginary person inside your head. Just the act of talking about it as if I were explaining it to someone helps my brain understand things piece by piece.
And for certain topics, I've found that LLM chatbots like ChatGPT work well for this. The dialogue nature of these chatbots fits perfectly with my preferred learning style above. Note that I don't really rely on it for factual information, it's more-so that just the act of talking about it to another 'person' really helps me retain the information. So like a typical conversation I'll have with ChatGPT will start off like "I'm doing research on ______ and want you to help me understand anything I might be missing. If _____________ is true, then my understanding is that _____________. Does this make sense? What other factors have I not considered?" and so on. Sounds a bit silly but I've found it super helpful for things recently.
What saved my 3rd year of mech eng studies back in 2016 was Coursera's free Learning How To Learn course. I cannot recommend it enough.
I personally find the best way to learn about something is to become interested in it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t find it interesting at first, but when getting into the topic ask yourself, “why do people devote so much time into this? Why is this enrapturing to others? What can I get from learning about this?” Such explorations spark an interest that will get you learning from natural exploration.
That absolutely doesn't work for the law stuff for me... It does for the other courses! And the teacher we have is amazing at making things interesting
But not to that extent, haha
Some very good suggestions for repetition and performance refinement. Your calculations courses will greatly improve with the latter: get as many past papers with answe keys as you can and drill yourself .
For "dry" memorization, try "repetition + reduction" ---> pretend you're allowed a cheat sheet and physically write out one using as small lettering as you can. Do a mock exam using your cheat sheet. Do NOT type or digitally print, use physical hand writing. Done? Now reduce the cheat sheet size to 50% or 75% --> physically copy over everything you cannot memorize. Do another mock exam. Reduce and repeat.
I find I learn the best by taking practice tests that have rationales for the answers. It teaches you to really think about all the information you’re given in a test, and I believe it really helps with critical thinking in the real world as well.
Sometimes the textbook has online software has these, sometimes you can find apps on the appstore for this, sometimes you can purchase a program for it. Some subjects also sell books full of practice questions.
I find that this method makes the dry stuff a lot more interesting by kind of turning it into a game if that makes sense.