11 minute read
1. The Science of Learning
Section 1
The Science of Learning
Benjamin Franklin
In this section, you will find information about:
• Brilliant Brain: how understanding your brain helps you learn better • Make Your Memory Marvellous: tips and tricks for strengthening your memory • Take Control of How You Learn!
Metacogntion: the power of thinking about thinking
Brilliant Brain
What happens in my brain when I am learning?
Your brain is composed of about 85 billion neurons, which is more than the number of stars you can see with the naked eye in the night sky. A neuron is a cell which acts as a messenger, sending information in the form of nerve impulses to other neurons. The electrical signals that are communicated from one neuron to another are therefore what allows you to do everything you do. Each neuron can be connected with up to 10,000 other neurons, leading to a large number of connections in your brain.
When you are learning, important changes take place in your brain, including the creation of new connections between your neurons. This is neuroplasticity. The more you practice, the stronger these connections become so keep plugging away at things. As your connections strengthen, the messages (nerve impulses) are transmitted increasingly faster, making them more efficient. That is how you become better at anything you learn whether it is playing football, reading or drawing.
To maximise the use of your brain for studying and learning you should activate your neurons and space the activation of neurons.
Repeatedly activate your neurons
• Practising a lot and trying to retrieve information from your memory, for example, by explaining a concept to a friend or answering quiz questions, is essential for you to maximise your brain’s power.
• If this is hard then that is positive. Scientists think that this ‘struggle’ improves learning because the challenge is an indication that you are building new connections.
Remember, learning something new is like hiking in a bush with no designated trail; you will probably walk slowly at first, but if you keep hiking, trails will start forming and eventually you will be walking on well-beaten tracks.
• When you do try to recall what you have learned and make a mistake, it can help you identify gaps in your learning and give you an indication of which trail still needs to be worked on.
Spacing the activation of neurons
• Practising more often but for a shorter period is productive. For example, instead of studying for two hours in a row, studying four periods of 30 minutes over a few days allows your brain to take breaks and sleep which helps you remember better in the long run.
• Scientists who study the learning brain observed that breaks and sleep between learning periods enhance learning and minimise forgetting. It is better to retrieve often within spaced practice sessions, as opposed to a massed practice (practicing a task continuously without rest). For instance, instead of studying or doing homework for three hours, after which you would probably feel exhausted anyway, you could separate this learning period into three one-hour periods or even into six half-an-hour periods.
• When you take a quick break from practicing, even for 20 minutes, you allow for the maintenance or replacement of the receptors on the surface of the neurons. Taking a break helps them work better: your neurons can thus transmit their nerve impulses more easily to other neurons.
• When you get a night of sleep between practice sessions, you actually benefit from a free retrieval practice session because while you sleep, your brain reactivates the connections between the neurons that you activated during the day. You could also get similar benefits from a nap.
Make Your Memory Marvellous
For those that think they have a bad memory – do you know all the words to your favourite song? Can you sing every word? So, there is nothing wrong with your memory itself. But why are you able to recall song lyrics? The answer: interest, engagement, enjoyment, repetition.
Imagine the mind like a big field full of corn, six feet high. When you learn something, it’s a bit like placing a book in the field. It’s in there. The difficulty comes when recalling that information. The more you walk back and forth to the clearing where the book is, the stronger and more ingrained the path is. This is what your brain is doing. The more you keep going back over information the more your brain will think it’s important. The actual physical structure of your brain changes and just like the path in the field becoming more well-trodden, the more your brain will lay synaptic pathways. Eventually, over time, that faint path can become a motorway. However, if you stop walking the path, it gradually becomes more overgrown and harder to find and follow. Likewise, if you rip those pages out of the book and scatter them all over the field, the harder it is to have all the information linked in your mind. You’re walking all over the field to try to piece together what you know. Structure and organize what you are learning so it is together in one area. If you see the bigger picture and have your knowledge well organised, then what you need is all in the same clearing in the field, making it much easier to find.
Strengthen your memory!
Try to understand the information first.
Information that is organised and makes sense to you is easier to memorise.
Link it.
Connect the information you are trying to memorise to something that you already know. For example, say you are trying to memorise the fact that water at sea level boils at 212
degrees Fahrenheit, and 212 happens to be the first three digits of your best friend’s phone number. Link these two by imagining throwing your phone into a boiling ocean.
Sleep on it.
Your brain processes and stores information while you sleep. Try to review information just before you go to sleep.
Self-test.
Quiz yourself every so often by actively recalling the information you are trying to study. Make sure to actively quiz yourself – do not simply reread notes or a textbook. Instead, ask yourself questions and force yourself to remember it without looking at the answer or material.
Use distributed practice.
For a concept to move from your temporary working memory to your long-term memory, two things need to happen: the concept should be memorable and it should be repeated. Use repetition to firmly lodge information in your memory. Repetition techniques can involve things like flash cards and self-testing. Space out your studying and repetition over several days, and start to increase the time in between each study session.
Write it out.
Writing appears to help us more deeply encode information that we’re trying to learn because there is a direct connection between our hand and our brain.
Create meaningful groups that simplify the material.
For example, let’s say you wanted to remember the names of four plants – garlic, rose, hawthorn and mustard. The first letters abbreviate to GRHM, so you can connect that with the image of a GRAHAM cracker. Now all you need to do is remember to picture a graham cracker, and the names of the plants will be easier to recall.
Use mnemonics.
Mnemonics are systems and tricks that make information more memorable. (See Section 5, Revise Effectively).
Talk to yourself.
It can be an effective memory tool. Try speaking aloud instead of simply highlighting or rereading information.
Exercise!
Studies show that exercise can improve our memory and learning capabilities because it helps create neurons in areas that relate to memory.
Practice interleaving.
Interleaving is the idea of mixing or alternating skills or concepts that you want to memorise. For example, spend some time memorising vocabulary words for your Science class and then immediately switch to studying historical dates and names for your History class. Follow that up with practising a few Maths problems, and then jump back to the Science definitions. This method may seem confusing at first, but yields better results in the end than simply spending long periods of time on the same concept.
Trick your memory into remembering!
Visual and spatial techniques are memory tricks that involve your five senses. They utilise images, songs, feelings and our bodies to help information stick.
Memorable visual images.
The next time you have a key item you need to remember, try making a memorable visual image to represent that item. Rather than just visualising an image, try to smell, feel and hear the image as well. For example, if you are trying to remember that the capital of Louisiana is Baton Rouge, draw up an image of a girl named Louise carrying a red baton.
The memory palace technique.
This technique involves visualising a familiar place – like the layout of your house or dorm room – and using it as a visual space where you can deposit concept-images that you want to remember. To use the memory palace technique, visualise your place (house or dorm room) and then imagine items you need to remember in different areas around the place.
Songs and jingles.
These use your brain’s right hemisphere and can help you remember tricky things like equations and lists. There are already plenty of songs out there for things like the quadratic formula – try Googling what you are trying to remember to see if someone has already created a tune. If not, try making your own.
The five senses.
Using as many of the five senses as possible when studying helps you use more parts of your brain and retain information better. For example, if studying for an anatomy exam, pick up the anatomy models, feel each part, and say the names of them out loud.
Lively visual metaphors or analogies.
This can help you to not only remember but understand concepts, especially in Maths and Science. A metaphor is a way of realising that one thing is somehow similar to another. For example, think about the country of Syria as shaped like a bowl of cereal and the country Jordan as a Nike Air Jordan trainer.
Take Control of How You Learn!
Metacognition is being aware of your behaviour and thoughts so that you can control your thinking process. By being aware of how you think and act, you can understand what success will look like and identify strategies to reach a specific learning objective.
Examples of metacognition:
• Understanding that you might have difficulty remembering certain concepts and ideas.
• Realising that there could be something wrong with your solution to a problem.
• Knowing that you’ll have to review certain information in order to retain it.
There are three stages of metacognition:
Planning Monitoring Evaluation
In the planning stage of metacognition, you should ask yourself:
• What am I being asked to do?
• What strategies will I find useful?
• How have I attempted similar tasks in the past?
The monitoring stage of metacognition is important for you to put what you have learnt in place, track your progress, and identify how close you are to reaching your goal.
After reaching a goal, it can be just as important to evaluate and reflect upon the whole process. By doing this, you will be confident in knowing which learning strategies work well for you, and which learning strategies you may want to avoid in the future.
7 ways to develop metacognitive skills
1. Know you don’t know it all and focus on what you don’t know. 2. Set yourself great goals. 3. Prepare properly. 4. React better to the feedback you get. 5. Monitor your performance – don’t wait until the end to see how you are doing. 6. Seek out feedback. 7. Keep a diary of how you are working as this improves self-awareness.
Metacognition and goal setting
Setting and reviewing goals is one of the most significant ways that you can make and monitor progress. This can be done by setting both short- and long-term goals, ensuring that they are both challenging and realistic, as well as placing a strong emphasis on skill development and on outcome.
10 ways to improve your goal setting
1. Have a long-term goal – this motivates you. 2. Have a short-term goal – this makes you focus on achieving the long-term goal. 3. Make goals challenging but realistic: aim high. 4. Make your goals specific as this makes it easier to monitor progress. 5. Be clear on the why. Give a reason why your goal is important. 6. Focus on skills – not just the end outcome. 7. Be flexible – if the situation changes then tweak your goals. 8. Share your goals with your tutor – if other people know about them then they can help you. 9. Be aware of potential obstacles and have a plan for combatting them. 10. Monitor progress to stay on track.
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