Day 12: Active Learning

Today we discuss what every learning session should look like, why it is important to engage in learning this way, and step by step how to learn in this way.

Resources for this lesson:

• Transcripts
• Worksheet
• List of Scientific References

Summary

What Should Our Learning Look Like?

Your learning should be active and focused:

Active learning: You engage with the learning material [1], making your brain work hard and think hard, encouraging synaptic connections to take place between neurons.

• In active learning you not only learn skills and concepts, but you actively apply them through doing things like projects, teaching other people, and doing something called active recall.
• Passive learning: You read, listen, or watch learning material without any effort into your own thought about the material that you were are being taught.

The second part of our learning equation, is learning should be focused which toggles the brain between two completely different modes [2]of thinking and learning:

• Focus mode: concentrating hard on a particular task
• Diffuse mode: thoughts are still flowing through your mind, you're just not focusing on any particular thing while it's happening.

Learning involves going back and forth between focus mode and diffuse mode.

• Begin you learning by focusing intently on what your studying until you begin to really struggle with it.
• Then you take a break in the diffuse mode, working on the ideas in the background.
• Then you return to focus again and it starts to make better sense.

When you focus intensely on a single subject or task for a period of time, you start forming a myelin sheath, which allows for the signals to travel faster and more efficiently between neurons.

When we engage in diffuse mode by relaxing, taking a walk or going to sleep, our brain actually helps to make these connections more efficient.

Why is Active Learning Important?

Active learning engages the principle of Deep Processing which states that the more mental processing one performs on information, the more likely one is to retain the information.

• The goal of doing active learning is to get this information to stick in our mind so that it can be accessed later and actually applied in real life to solve problems.

During this process of active learning we are moving information from short-term memory to long-term memory:

• Short-term memory (Working Memory) [3]: Where three to four groups of information are consciously attended to and only retained for about half a minute at most.
• Long-term memory: Contains everything that we've learned up to this point in our lives, all the facts, words, concepts, images, procedures, ect.
• If too many thoughts occupy short-term memory at once it reaches its maximum cognitive load and becomes overwhelmed and hard to focus.
• Going between the focus and diffuse mode, will help us to consolidate information and allow us to start creating links to be stored in long-term memory.
• When we moved these information links into long-term memory, we often set it in there with a cue for being able to recall it later.

By embedding information into our long-term memory using active learning, we can recall the information later and use it to solve appropriate problems.

How to do Active Learning

The basic process is to:

1. Engage in active and focused learning session: focused intently on your learning material & using active learning techniques and practices to engage with that material.
2. Alternate from the focused mode to the diffuse mode: take some time away from the learning material and resting before returning to work with it.
3. Engage in practice: use active learning techniques to strengthen neural connections of previously learned material, moving it from short-term memory to long-term memory.
4. Build connections: Practice the foundational material first and start building associations with new material as continue learning, creating a larger neural network in your brain.
5. Master and apply the skill: continue practicing the skill until you are able to retrieve information easily and apply the skill to solving problems and reaching goals in real life.

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Activity

Start practicing active recall by remembering and writing down the key concepts from this lesson.

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Skill Lesson Mastered

Demonstrate mastery of the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson by applying it to the above activity. If, and only if, you have a full understanding and have mastered the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson, select the next lesson in the navigation.