Enroll in "Learning How to Learn" course on Coursera

Link: https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/ Taught by Dr. Barbara Oakly and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski

MODULE 01: What is Learning?
- Focused vs Diffuse Learning
  - Metaphors and Analogies provide powerful techniques for learning
  - Pinball analogy
    - Thoughts bounce around your head like a pinball
  - Focused Mode
    - Solve specific problems
  - Diffuse Mode
    - Think broadly
  - Our brain can only be in one mode at a time (binary)
  - Case Studies
    - Salvador Dali
      - Dropped keys to go from diffuse mode to focused mode
    - Thomas Edison
      - Diffuse Mode: thinking with ball bearings in his hand
      - Focused Mode: as soon as he fell asleep the ball bearings would fall, the noise would wake him up. He would go into focus mode immediately
  - Work out your brain by alternating between Diffuse and Focused learning
  - What is learning
    - There are a million billion synapses in the brain
    - Neurons create new connections when learning
    - Neurons that fire together, wire together
    - Learn more about the brain at → http://brainfacts.org
- Procrastination, Memory, and Sleep
  - Procrastination
    - PROBLEM: Procrastination
      - PAIN: Pain areas in brain are activated when you look into things you would rather not do
      - DISAPPEARS: studies show the pain goes away shortly after you start doing what you dreaded to do
      - Typical Procrastination Steps
        
        Unhappy Feeling: when you think of doing something you don’t like
        
        Funnel attention to more pleasant task: focus on distraction (Facebook, YouTube, TV)
        
        Feel happy (temporarily)
    - SOLUTION: “Pomodoro Technique"
      - Pomodoro (tomato)is a time management technique by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s
      - Set timer to 25 minutes
      - Turn off all interruptions
      - Focus
      - Reward yourself when you’re done (stretch, take a break, coffee, chat)
  - Practice Makes Permanent
    - COW - easier to remember because it can be easily represented in the physical world (imagine a cow on a field)
    - Mathematical Symbols - hard to remember. No clear analogous in the real everyday world. More abstract terms are harder to retain except those related to emotions (love, anger, fear, wonder)
    - Neurons link together through repeated use
    - To understand difficult abstract concepts you need to practice to solidify those neural patterns
    - Alternate focused with diffuse learning to create a neatly organized neural pattern.
  - Memory
    - Long Term Memory vs Working Memory
    - Working Memory (Short Term memory)
      - Thoughts you are processing at the processing moment
      - Mostly tied to the prefrontal cortex
      - It can hold only 4 chunks of information (not 7 as previously thought)
      - It dissipates quickly so you need repetition to reinforce thoughts
      - Analogy: like a not very good blackboard
    - Long-Term Memory
      - LTM is pretty evenly distributed over the brain
      - It has room for billions of items (not just 4 like in STM)
      - It takes time and spaced repetition to transfer memories from STM to LTM
      - Analogy: like a storage warehouse
    - Spaced Repetition
      - Practice the same task over several days and weeks with longer spaces over time
      - i.e.: 1,2,3,5,8,13,21days
      - Don’t try to repeat things a zillion times the same day. Less intensity spread over a longer period help cement your memories better.
  - Sleep
    - Sleep cleanses your brain
      - How? During sleep cells shrink and toxins created during your awake hours can be washed away
    - Tidies up your ideas
      - Deletes less important part of memories
      - Strengthens memories that you need or want to remember
      - Rehearses some of the toughest parts of whatever you’re trying to learn
    - Lets your subconscious communicate smoother
      - Your conscious mind is turned off and it doesn’t interfere with your subconscious activities
    - Going to sleep after learning it can help you dream about your topic and help you work on it while you sleep
- Interview with Dr. Terrence Sejnowski
  - Computational neuroscientist
  - Goal: to build linking principles, from brain to behavior using computational models.
  - Questions:
    - How do you learn more easily?
      - The best way to learn is by doing
      - Get close to experts and work with them (learning by osmosis)
    - How do you pay attention during a boring lecture?
      - I ask questions
      - This forces “active engagement” vs “passive listening"
    - How do you get into “diffused” thinking mode and how do you take advantage of it?
      - Jogging or getting exercise.
      - Many ideas appear so he takes a notebook to jot them down before they evaporate
    - Do you multitask, or, or if you don't, how do you resist the urge to multitask when you want to multitask?
      - Multitasks a lot during working hours
      - Get a lot more focused work done in the evening when everything is quieter
    - Can you do more than one thing at a time?
      - It’s not possible but you can get better at switching single task focus
    - How do you apply your knowledge of neuroscience, to your own learning?
      - All your neurons are the same from birth and they slowly die to create cortex shrinkage
      - Except in the hippocampus (center for learning and memory) where new neurons are being born even in your adulthood
      - They tested that rats exposed to a rich environment (lots of diverse activity and socializing with others rats) had almost double of cells in the hippocampus
      - Working alone without a rich environment is detrimental to neuron development in the hippocampus
      - The alternative is to exercise regularly. Dr. Terrence is an avid runner which helps increase brain activity and neuron formation in his hippocampus
      - Activity breaks are crucial to initiate the neuron regeneration process
    - Have there been any special techniques you've acquired over the years that help you focus, learn or create more effectively?
      - Being in a creative environment surrounded by creative people helps a lot.
      - Having other people around to bounce your ideas off of is really very important to learn and create more effectively.
    - Advice on test taking?
      - Don’t get hung up on questions. Move on and let your brain work on the background and then go back to the unanswered questions.
    - How do you keep yourself creative in the face of the onslaught of the more routine day by day tasks?
      - Being surrounded by great students and colleagues helps a lot. Younger minds help to keep yourself young.
    - Any advice for a young high school or college student, about how to learn effectively?
      - Passion and persistence trump smarts most of the time.
      - Use “beginners mind” looks at things with a fresh eye to gain new perspectives
MODULE 2: Chunking
- Chunking - The Essentials
  - Chunks are pieces of information that are bound together through use and often through meaning.
  - They can be large and complex, but still take up only one slot in your working memory.
  - Chunks are best built with focused attention, understanding, and practice.
  - Analogy: chunks of information as puzzle pieces that together form a whole of understanding
  - Chunking helps your brain run more efficiently
  - Each chunk is a main idea
  - Octopus Analogy: during focused mode learning the tentacles enter via your 4 slots of your working memory to make connections in various parts of the brain.
- How to form a chunk - Overview
  - Break down a complex task into smaller units of information that you can practice individually
  - It’s important to focus on how an individual step (chunk) connects to other steps
- How to form a chunk - Process
  - Step 1: Focus on the information you want to chunk. Remove distractions. The distractions break down the "attentional octopus" tentacles.
  - Step 2: Understand the basic idea you’re trying to learn.
    - Use diffuse and focused mode to grasp the gist of the new concept.
    - The chunk cannot be isolated from previous knowledge (the puzzle piece won’t fit)
    - Don’t think that by getting an “aha” moment you can actually do what you’ve learned.
    - You need to do it to truly master the concept.
  - Step 3: Practice to gain context to know when and how to use the new chunk.
    - Bottom-up leaning = chunking
    - Top-down leaning = big picture
    - Both processes are necessary to gain mastery over the material
    - Context is where the bottom up and top down approaches meet
    - Tip: learn the main concepts (top-down) to gain global understanding (big picture) before you start with chunking (bottom-up learning)
  - Understanding is like a superglue that helps hold the underlying memory traces together.
- Illusions of competence, The Importance of Recall, Mini-testing, and Making Mistakes
  - Recall (Retrieval Practice)
    - Instead of re-reading a book try to recall as much as you can
    - Recall practice solidifies the neuronal loops that form learning chunks
    - Re-reading only works if it’s done over time as spaced repetition
    - You need to get to the solution yourself instead of reading the answer and thinking you learned
    - TIPS: Keep highlighting text to a minimum. Notes that synthesize paragraphs are great!
  - Mini-testing
    - To avoid the illusion of competence testing yourself to promote long-term learning
    - Mini-testing is a form of recall. To pass the test you need to recall
  - Making-mistakes
    - When you make a mistake trying to recall a concept while performing a mini-test it helps you discover and fill in the learning gaps
  - TIP: practice recall at different locations it helps to learn better. You become independent of any cues given from any given location (it can help when taking a test in a different environment from where you did your learning)
- Seeing The Bigger Picture
  - What motivates you?
    - Neurotransmitters involved in motivation
      - Acetylcholine
      - Dopamine
      - Serotonine
    - Acetylcholine
      - Important for focused learning
    - Dopamine - neuromodulator
      - Controls motivation
      - Produced in the Basal Ganglia
      - Dopamine is produced when we receive an unexpected reward
      - Dopamine can motivate you to do something that may not be rewarding right now but will lead to a much better reward in the future.
      - Drugs give a temporarily release of dopamine but result in the opposite effect killing motivation (it only produced craving and dependence)
        
        Drugs can lead to a loss of Dopamine which can result in “anhedonia” or loss of interest in things once gave you pleasure.
        
        Severe loss of Dopamine causes resting tremor, slowness, rigidity = Parkinson’s disease
        
        More severe loss leads to “catatonia” complete lack of any movement.
    - Serotonin
      - It’s a diffuse neuromodulatory system that strongly affects your social life
        
        Alpha monkeys have the highest level of serotonin
        
        Prozak a drug for clinical depression raises the level of Serotonin activity
      - Lower Serotonin is linked to risk-taking behavior. Inmates with violent crimes have the lowest Serotonin activity in society
    - Emotions
      - Emotions are now proven to affect your learning and memory capacity
      - Cognition and emotion are integrated inside the amygdala
      - The amygdala is part of the limbic system and together with the hippocampus are involved in processing memory, decision making, and regulating emotions.
      - Keep your amygdala happy to be an effective learner
  - The Value of a Library of Chunks
    - Transfer
      - Chunks can help you understand concepts among different disciplines
      - Building chunks can help you learn new concepts faster
    - Two problem-solving approaches
      - Sequential: steps by step towards a solution
      - Holistic (global): uses intuition and diffused mode thinking
        
        Most new concepts are solved using the holistic approach
    - Law of serendipity: Lady Luck favors the one who tries
      - Do the effort to learn a concept and the remaining will be easier to grasp
  - Overlearning
    - Pros: great where full automated recall is necessary
      - i.e.: tennis serve, public speaking (TED Talks people train up to 70 hours for a 15 min talk)
    - Cons: once you have grasped a concept, hammering at it doesn’t help long-term memory retention
    - Repeating what you know is easy but doesn’t yield improvement
      - Ie: repeating the same song in the piano a zillion times can create the “illusion of competence” that you know how to play anything well in piano
    - Deliberate Practice: focus on learning the difficult stuff not the easy stuff
    - Einstellung (Mindset)
      - Your initial intuition is not necessarily the best and may make you miss the real solution
      - You need to unlearn your erroneous ideas (your rut) to help your learning process
      - Happens a lot when you’re entrenched in your old thought patterns
    - Interleaving
      - Jump back and forth between problems and situations that require different techniques or strategies
      - It helps to build flexibility and creativity
      - Interleave between fields to create interesting connections between them
      - The biggest breakthroughs usually come from young people or people from direct fields that come with a new perspective (people that are interleaving)
  - Overview
    - When you are trying to figure something out, if you have a good library of chunks, you can more easily skip to the right solution by—metaphorically speaking—“listening” to whispers from your diffuse mode. Your diffuse mode can help you connect two or more chunks together in new ways to solve novel problems.
    - "Chunking" involves compressing information more compactly--this is part of why it is easier to draw a "chunked" idea or concept into mind.
    - Concepts and problem-solving methods you might learn for physics can be very similar to chunked concepts in business. As you gain more experience in chunking in any particular subject, you will see that the chunks you are able to create are bigger—in some sense, the ribbons are longer. Once you’ve got the basic idea down during a session, continuing to hammer away at it during the same session doesn’t strengthen the kinds of long-term memory connections you want to have strengthened. Worse yet, focusing on one technique is a little like learning carpentry by only practicing with a hammer. After a while, you think you can fix anything by just bashing it.
Interleaving your studies—making a point to review for a test, for example, by skipping around through problems in the different chapters and materials—can sometimes seem to make your learning more difficult. But in reality, it helps you learn more deeply.
One significant mistake students sometimes make in learning is jumping into the water before they learn to swim. In other words, they blindly start working on homework without reading the textbook, attending lectures, viewing online lessons, or speaking with someone knowledgeable. It’s like randomly allowing a thought to pop off in the focused-mode pinball machine without paying any real attention to where the solution truly lies.
Although practice and repetition are important in helping build solid neural patterns to draw on, it’s interleaving that starts building flexibility and creativity. It’s where you leave the world of practice and repetition and begin thinking more independently.
- Interview with Dr. Norman Fortenberry - Learning at MIT
  - He took an interest on "how to teach effectively"
  - TEAM: To really learn you need to work in a team. Use study groups
    - Be challenged by your study group to teach and explain what you’ve learned
  - He watches inane TV shows as a way of relaxation to trigger diffuse mental mode
  - Learning how to learn → Multi-modal input → Practice using multiple learning approaches. Writing, typing, reading, watching,
- Interview with Scott Young, a "Marco Polo" of Learning
  - Compressed a 4-year degree in one year by self-directed learning
  - Get to action as quickly as possible
    - i.e.: get to speaking asap when learning a new language
  - Feel the struggle
    - You need to feel the struggle before you look for the solution to really learn
  - Self-explanation
    - Write down what you’ve learned as if you were teaching someone
    - When you struggle to make a clear explanation those are areas you don’t truly understand yet
  - Create Vivid Examples
    - The mind doesn’t understand abstract things. Only concrete examples
    - Look for stories or examples (analogies) that are concrete an illustrate the abstract concept
      - Ie: Voltage: compare it to the gravitational potential where if electricity is water going through a pipe, Voltage is like pipes that are higher and therefore the water gives more energy.
  - How do you motivate to learn stuff you don’t care so much about?
    - Encourage yourself to dive into the subject taking small steps or doing min-projects
    - As soon as you become better you’ll gain confidence and more motivation to keep going
  - Create time constrained projects (challenges) to master new topics
    - It forces him to have concrete goals (SMART goals)
    - Scott uses this approach to learn anything. Now learning Korean (his 6th language)
    - He loves “Would it be possible...” projects = would it be possible to get an MIT degree in one year without going to MIT?
  - Prioritize intense focused learning over short periods than lighter learning over longer periods
    - He dedicates 4 hours a day to learn Korean but in a very focused manner
    - This approach is much more effective than unfocused full-time learning
MODULE 3: Procrastination and Memory
- Procrastination
  - How procrastination works
    - Procrastination is just a bad and addictive avoidance habit (the inner zombies)
    - It provides temporarily relieve from tasks we want to avoid
    - Procrastinators tell themselves stories that justify their behavior
      - Ie: it’s not possible to fix it. It’s innate, etc.
    - It’s possible to beat procrastination take gradual steps to form new habits
  - The habit loop of procrastination
    - 1. The Cue: a reminder, text message, event that triggers the routine
    - 1. The Routine: the habitual reaction to a cue (the zombie mode)
    - 1. The Reward: the pleasure you get by doing the routine. In procrastination, the reward is immediate to it reinforces the bad habit. However, you can create a good habit by rewarding yourself when you do it. i.e.: you study for a while then give yourself a reward
    - 1. The Belief: to change a habit you need to change your beliefs (i.e. from it’s not possible to it’s possible)
  - Beat procrastination: Focus on The Process not the result
    - Create a process to make incremental progress every day
    - Focus on the progress not on how far are you from the result
      - Ie: John Sonmez: upload at least 1 video to youtube every day for at least 2 years. It will almost impossible not to find success (100K+ subs) sticking to this routine
      - Pomodoro technique is a process that helps you make progress in a structured manner
  - Beat procrastination: Break the habit loop
    - 1. The Cue: identity what triggers your procrastination
        
        4 triggers: Location, Time, How you feel, Reactions
        
        i.e.: a text message takes you into a Facebook bing
        
        Solution: turn off notifications
    - 1. The Routine: develop a substitute ritual that overrides your automatic response
        
        Create a plan: i.e.: leave your phone in the car when going to study
    - 1. The Reward: give yourself a reward for doing the work
        
        i.e.: take a break, eat something, watch something, do something you like
    - 1. The Belief: trust the process. Surround yourself with encouraging peers
  - Productivity Strategies
    - Weekly: write down main tasks for the week
    - Daily: write a to-do list every day for the next day before going to sleep
    - Put it on the calendar and use Pomodoros (25 mins chunks of focused uninterrupted work)
    - Eat your frogs in the morning = do the most important tasks first
- Memory
  - Our spatial memory is excellent
  - Memorization techniques:
    - Attach concepts to visuals: i.e.: F=MA → Flying = Mule Ass
    - The funnier and more evocative the images the better
    - Handwriting helps solidify memories
    - Use paced repetition to commit to memory facts
    - Use “Anki” flashcards
  - What is Long Term Memory?
    - Memory consolidation: the process of committing short-term memories to long-term memories
    - Memory consolidation happens in the hippocampus
    - Patient H.M. loss short term moratory after having his hippocampus removed
    - Reconsolidation: memories change when we recall them. i.e.: an old memory can be replaced
    - Better to recall using spaced repetition than cramming all in one day
    - Astrocytes (most common Glial cells in the brain) they provide nutrients and ion balancing to neurons
      - Astrocytes have a role in memory. When human astrocytes where put into mice brains they were able to learn faster
      - Einstein's brain had much more astrocytes than the average human brain
  - Memorization strategies
    - Create meaningful groups that simplify the material
      - i.e.: foods that kill vampires: Garlic, Rose, Hawthorn, Mustard
      - Convert to initials: GRaHaM ← Graham cracker
    - Associate events or feeling to dates and numbers
      - 11 = a good time to run the 100 meters
      - Some Lovers Try Positions Set They Can’t Handle = names of the Carpus bones in the hand
      - Old People From Texas Eat Spiders = bones in the cranium
    - Memory palace
      - Place facts into locations of a location you know well, i.e.: your home
      - Make the facts shockingly memorable. Milk = 200lb milk carton exploding on the couch
      - Book on memory palace: "Walking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer
    - Advantages of using memorization tricks
      - The act of coming up with memorable mental images is a great exercise to improve creativity
- Interviews
  - Nelson Dellis - 4 Time US Memory Champion
    - Learn a new skill
    - Exercise
    - Be social
    - Good diet
    - Take 1,000 milligrams of DHA omega-3 a day
    - Have fun - be playful, use your imagination like when you were a kid
  - Dr. Robert Gamache, an Award-winning Bilingual Scientist
    - Hardwired his brain to solve problems in one discipline made it easier to solve problems in other disciplines
    - To get unstuck he stops working on the problem and does a mindless activity to let the brain gears do their work in the background
    - Everyday do something that helps you stay ahead of your competition
    - Researcher’s mantra: “Publish or Perish”
    - You need to have downtime to refresh your mind
    - A great teacher works hard to choose great analogies and metaphors to explain things
  - Keith Devlin, the NPR "Math Guy” from Stanford
    - How do you approach problem-solving in Math?
      - Don’t panic
      - Create diagrams to help you visualize the problem
      - Test different approaches to solve the problem
      - If you get stuck. Takes break and the solution will come to you later
      - If to solve a problem you need a new insight it cannot come from just thinking about it. You need to step away, change environment and let the new happen
      - For Math, you need to allow your brain to take its time. Math is new and our brains are old. It takes a while to process math with our operating system
      - For a god. Mind you need a good body. Mente Sana in corporate Sano
      - Avoid multitasking. Instead, he focused very intensively on one task at a time.
      - You only need to put willpower at the beginning. The Cue.
MODULE 4: Renaissance Learning and Unlocking Your Potential
- How to Become A Better Learner
  - Physical Exercise: it helps your neurons survive
  - Practice makes perfect:
    - However timing is important. Our brains are optimized to learn languages before puberty.
    - Good judgment takes a long time and experience to acquire - PreFrontal cortex is the last part of the brain to develop
  - Hitting learning walls is normal
    - During the learning process, there will be moments where you are seen to unlearn. This is part of the rewiring process. Have patience and persevere.
- Learning Strategies
  - 3 Main strategies
    - Metaphors and Analogies
    - Teamwork
    - How to perform well on tests
  - Metaphors and Analogies
    - Sample of useful analogies and metaphors
      - Voltage = water and gravitational potential
      - Current = water pressure
      - Cation = Cat’s paws = “paws"itive = positive
      - Anion = Onion = negative ← onion makes you cry
      - Stories help illustrate complex topics
    - Beginner’s mind
      - Don’t let your preconceived knowledge prevent you from seeing new answers (Einstellung)
      - Having a superb memory can be detrimental to creative thinking
    - Deliberate Practice
      - Spaced practice that focuses on difficult areas
      - It can help you train your brain to reach the level of gifted brains
      - It will help you perform well on tests
    - An ordinary genius: Santiago Ramón y Cajal
      - Nobel Prize winner and father of modern neuroscience
      - Santiago was stubborn and rebellious
      - He improved his cognitives abilities by thinking specific thoughts on purpose
      - Those throughs help rewire his brain
      - We can make changes in our brain by changing how we think
      - Connectivism: expose yourself to many ways to ingest a topic can enhance your learning
      - Use your uniqueness as an advantage to see things differently.
  - Team Work
    - Right hemisphere: important to do reality checks. It challenges the status quo an looks for inconsistencies (associated with Diffuse mode thinking)
    - Left hemisphere: clings to the way things and doesn’t question assumptions (associated with Focused mode thinking)
      - Richard Feynman: The first principle is that you must not full yourself and you are the easiest to person to fool
    - Team work can avoid overlooking gaps and errors in your knowledge. Your peers can be your outsourced right hemisphere
    - Beware of teams where members divert from topic and don’t stay focused
  - Test Taking Strategies
    - Tests help a lot to retain concepts as it enforces recall
    - How to prepare for a test → The Checklist (by Dr. Richard Felder)
      - Did you make a serious effort to understand the text?
      - Did you work with classmates on homework problems?
      - Did you attempt to outline every homework problem solution?
      - Did you participate actively in homework group discussions
      - Did you consult with the instructor?
      - Did you understand ALL your homework problem solutions?
      - Did you ask in class for explanations to homework problem solutions they weren’t clear to you?
      - Did you use and follow a study guide?
      - Did you attempt to outline lots of problem solutions quickly?
      - Did you go over the stuff guide and problems with classmates and quit one another?
      - Was there a review session and attended it and asked questions?
      - Did you get a reasonable night’s sleep before the test?
    - How to tackle test problems
      - “The Hard Start-Jump to Easy” technique
      - Start with the hard ones and jump to the easy ones
      - If you get stuck leave it and let the diffuse mode (background processing) take place by going to the easy ones
    - Reinterpret your stress
      - Replace Fear with Excitement: Cortisol levels are thought as fear but you can reinterpret them as excitement
      - Breath deeply: it will help to calm you down
      - Try to consciously relax out tongue
      - Cover answers on multiple choice questions and try to recall the answer on your own first
      - Study with a timer so the sense of urgency is really like it will be in the actual test
      - Have a plan B: know what you’ll do if you fail your test. Face your fears!
      - Good Worry vs Bad Worry
        
        Good Worry: provides motivation
        
        Bad Worry: wastes energy
      - Do a light review before the test. Don't push too hard (run a 10K the day before the marathon)

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