Traditional style of learning consists of predominantly sitting down in a classroom passively listening to a teacher and taking notes, but how effective is this?
We spend the majority of our school years in a classroom amongst many other children, but is this approach enhancing our overall learning experience? What else can we do individually and independently to help us continually grow and develop on a personal and academic level?
Learning styles can differ greatly from individual to individual, as highlighted in our article about the different types of learners.
Strategic learning can help you gain more value on your time dedicated to learning. By developing a learning strategy, you can create leverage in your development and progress. We are often encouraged to “work harder”, but it is so much more beneficial to work “smarter”.
Whilst we appreciate that everyone’s learning pace is different and understand that education is a gradual and never ending process, we have outlined some of our best tips on how to develop a better approach in learning more effectively. It is important we learn how to be productive with our time so that we condition ourselves for success in return for the investment in our time and energy.
Failing to do so could lead to procrastination and conditioning discouraging habits that can lead to low confidence in our ability to carry our goals that we set ourselves in future.
- Be active in your learning
By taking notes and participating in your learning, capturing what you are learning and engage in your learning as opposed to passively sitting down and simply listening. A great app you can use to record information is www.evernote.com. Evernote is a great platform for syncing all your notes, images, videos amongst other features that allows you to quickly and easily capture information. Instead of manually writing down notes, you could choose to voice record information using a dictaphone or type your notes using the Evernote app. You can also easily share notes with others using the app and it works fairly similar to Google Docs.
2. Develop a “mastery mentality”
Are you committed to mastery or are you a dabbler? People that achieve the best results devote an abundance of time and dedication to honing their craft, never feeling complacent and always striving to learn more and to add depth to their existing knowledge. Dabblers often have general knowledge of various areas of a subject, but will likely hit a “plateau” in their education.
If you are constantly performing at a certain level and failing to raise the bar, you are encouraged to fully dig deep and commit to building a strong foundation of knowledge and making sure that you are always putting your true best into learning a subject.
We highlighted the importance of developing a mastery mentality in our article about Why you or your child may not making progress in their education. It’s also worth emphasising that just knowing and learning information is not always sufficient – it’s being able to apply the information and really internalise the information at a much deeper level that produces results. Contrary to popular belief, knowledge is not power, knowledge is only potential power. Many of us often use the phrase “I know that”.
When catching yourself saying this, ask yourself “Am I applying it?” “Can I answer all questions based on this topic?” “What types of questions based on this topic do I often come up short in my answers?” For example, even if you “understand” fractions, would you be able to answer word problems that requires application of fractions? If not, it may be worthwhile to go over these types of questions and check your answers in accordance to the mark scheme.
3. Condense large amounts of information
Deconstruct a subject into subcategories and manage large bits of information by splitting it into more manageable counterparts. To learn more about how to systematically and effectively learn a subject well, by setting regular actionable steps to achieving goals, read our article on goal setting.
Goal setting and visualisation helps the mind focus on being resourceful and coming up with plans to achieve a desired outcome. By consciously raising your awareness of what it is specifically that you would like to achieve, you are more likely to bring these plans into fruition.
4. Invest in your education
Give something of value in exchange of what you are learning. It’s great to utilise free information through books and the internet, but when you invest in your education, you are more likely to appreciate the value than if you were to access free information and take it more seriously. In addition, when you invest in your education, there is often a degree of added accountability in exchange.
5. Teach what you have been taught
A great way to learn and internalise information is to share what you learn by teaching it to others, or at least imagining that you were to teach it to others. By doing so, you will be able to quickly apply and implement what you are learning. It is encouraged that you apply what you learn as soon as possible to increase knowledge retention.
To quickly learn something, imagine if you were to teach it to someone – how well will they understand? Through teaching, you can also learn more because you often have to be in a more resourceful state to be able to come up with the answers yourself.
6. Explore different teaching methods
Be innovative and open minded to trying new teaching styles and teaching methods. These days, we can access the same type of information in many different resources in the form of books, the internet and teachers, but it is their individual teaching styles, teaching methods and strategies that will be different.
Explore different avenues and discover which works best for you. Working with a 1 to 1 tutor that engages well with you and understand what brings the best out of you can fast track your progress.
7. Avoid being a “perfectionist” at the beginning
Although we believe in developing a mastery mentality and going deep and thorough during the learning process, at the beginning, it is better to just get started and have a general understanding of a topic. Building a foundation that you can work on later can really help you move forward faster and then ultimately develop mastery in a subject.
Being too much of a perfectionist and spending an enormous time at the beginning can actually do you a disservice to your progress, and you may end up going through “analysis paralysis”. Instead, just get started and avoid feeling too overwhelmed. Trusting the process, having confident in your abilities and staying consistent is the key to exceptional results.
8. Work with an accountability partner
We are all driven by incentives and are our behaviour is highly governed by motives. If we have a compelling enough reason and desire to learn faster, we will ultimately become more resourceful. It is amazing how effectively we can manage our time better if we have an urgent deadline to meet that requires us to move forward quicker.
Having someone who is checking up on you can help create that sense of urgency. Simply having a friend hold you accountable may not be the most effective strategy to getting things done.Working with a professional tutor who you can check into on a regular basis can really help shift your mindset from a “should” to a “must”.
Developing an effective learning strategy can help you obtain more clarity in what you are learning and how to manage your time effectively. Often times we fail to pursue a goal because we do not have clarity of what it is exactly we need to do and the action required to do so. It does not necessary mean we need to have a perfectly laid out plan, rather, a more effective approach that will enhance our overall learning experience that will allow us to build long term and sustainable results.
Having a good learning strategy in conjunction with working with someone who has effective teaching methods can enhance your overall learning experience and help you achieve excellent results.
Do you have any learning strategies that have worked for you? What have you found to be an effective approach to achieving long term sustainable results in education?