You attended that work retreat least weekend that was supposed to help you learn new stuff. But did you ever learn how to learn? Did you ever learn how to make information part of long-term memory that can be appropriately used in the future? Most people are not taught strategies and habits that help them learn. People tend to mimic what they see classmates or coworkers doing or they figure out how to learn on their own. And even then learning strategies become limited to things like repetition and rote memorization.
There are thousands of learning strategies that people use across disciplines and industries. Below are 4 key strategies that you can try in and out of the classroom. These strategies can be used in various disciplines and encourage Lifelong Learning.
4 Learning Strategies
- Decide what’s important
You might remember the joke your boss told during his presentation at the retreat, but details about the main point of his talk may be less clear. One way to decide where to focus your attention is to look for signals in a text or a talk that tell you what’s important.
In text, you can look for headings, words in bold or different colors that tell you the main idea. Then use this information to weed out text like backstory and anecdotes that, though interesting, distract from the main point. Handouts from a PowerPoint or Pressi presentation will often indicate the main ideas of a talk.
If you’re listening to a talk, changes in volume might signal an important idea. A good speaker will pause before making salient points or be strategic about where they tell a joke. The joke gets everyone’s attention and brings the audience ‘back to the room,’ as it were. Then the speaker talks about her important idea.
- Underlining and Highlighting
Everyone underlines and highlights. But they’re probably not doing it correctly. Here are 3 tips:
Don’t do it too much, instead be selective. Limit your highlights to only one or two sentences per paragraph. That way, you really focus your attention on what’s important.
Translate the information into your own words: While underlining or highlighting, write notes in the margins that transform the information you’ve selected into your own words, making every effort not to use the same words as the text.
Make connections between what you’re reading and what you may have read, heard or seen in the past. Are there patterns in the new information? Do these patterns relate to other patterns or relationships? You can use diagrams to represent any patterns you may have discovered in the margins next to the text.
- Take Notes
Good note taking is hard. Taking notes and listening to a talk or lecture is multitasking with two cognitively demanding tasks at the same time. You have to keep all information from the talk in your working memory, choose and organize the important ideas, and write them down, while you’re still listening to the talk. It seems like a lot to do, but note taking is a powerful learning strategy if you know how to use it. Here’s why:
It focuses your attention on the lecture or talk. (Some people find it distracting. If you’re one of these people, perhaps you might try recording lectures and listening later, when you can pause the lecture to take notes at your own pace.)
You translate what you hear, see and read into your own words. Transforming a lecture into your own words allows you to construct meaning and helps you remember the information. You will remember this information for a long time if you use it often. It’s lack of use, the idea of not taking information from long-term memory to use or adapt, that makes us forget things.
It’s like an external hard drive for your brain. Notes let you return to the main ideas of a talk or lecture and to review. Sometimes reviewing notes triggers memories of other salient points in the lecture and allows you to make even more connections between related ideas.
For all this to work…
- You need to be Metacognitive
Metacognition is thinking about your thinking. You are aware that you have a mind and are consciously making decisions about what you’re doing. As a learner, you decide on appropriate learning strategies. You pay attention to what you’re doing. Is this working? Does this information make sense? Is this a real connection or did I imagine it? If things are not making sense, you decide on a new approach and monitor your own reaction to it to see if it’s working or not.
And of course, learning doesn’t just occur. It takes attention to focus on important ideas. It takes focused effort to make connections, transform information into your own words and organize and reorganize it so you can think deeply and construct knowledge.
And like most skills, the more you practice these learning strategies with a combination of attention effort and deep thinking, the better you’ll be at learning.
Happy Learning!
