 Reflect upon what you learn and capsulize it. #2: Learn-to-Learn (Part 1 – Active and Reflective Learning Techniques)
After figuring out your learning-style last week, it’s time to learn the different techniques that work best for you. *Note – Techniques used by each style can work and be useful to the other styles. Just because one may statistically be better for one does not mean it won’t work for you. Try them all and experiment a little. Active Learner Techniques If you are an active learner and you’re creating your own class or in a class that doesn’t meet your needs, then these are some specific techniques that work with your brain chemistry. 1. Find a way to discuss the subject with others. This could be anyone, but it is preferable to have someone who knows as much as you do and has an interest in the subject, or is a subject matter expert. This could be someone who studies it themselves or is a professional in the business. The key is to find someone who you can talk with who can expand what you’re studying as well as put it in a realistic perspective of how it works in practice. A key provision of this strategy is finding a mentor who will consistently work with you to expand your knowledge as you learn the practice of what you’re trying to learn. Mentors are the most important and effective way to learn a subject and make it applicable to the real world. It should be utilized by all learning styles. 2. Create a Problem Solving Activity Look for ways you can apply your new knowledge. This entails looking how to use it in your everyday life or artificially creating a situation where you could use it. This could be doing an already created activity (From the Internet) or creating and running your own experiment to verify the information (Also from the Internet). Good Example: A good example of this is if you wanted to learn to trade stocks. You could actually trade stocks or you could use free web programs that give you fake money to trade on the real stock exchange so you can learn and test your own abilities and strategies. 3. Use what you learn. The final and best way to learn something is to actually do it. This entails going out and doing it. Go to a place where you can use your knowledge and practice what you learned. Public Speaking = Toastmasters International Club Engineering = Build a shed Programming = Design a program that solves a problem you have Business management = Start a Business Etc. = etc. Just do the hands-on work and you as an active learner will succeed. Reflective Learner Techniques If you are a reflective learner and you’re creating your own class or in a class that doesn’t meet your needs, then these are some specific techniques that work best with your mental inclinations. 1. Figure out your optimal ratio of learning to breaking. Reflective learners are notorious for having gestation periods where they need to take the information and let it develop and settle. These can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. The key here is to find out how long your gestation period is by experimenting with your own mind. Meaning you research the information and try to learn it. Then take a break to find out how long it takes to digest the information. You can find out your best combination of learning to digesting by choosing to learn something for a certain amount of time and then measuring how long it takes before you know it. A Good Example: Study for an hour. Break for an hour. See what you remember. Repeat using 2 hours of study to 1 hour of breaking. Repeat using any combination of times until you find your optimal learning to digesting ratio. 2. Find a good place or activity that helps you learn and gestate. Where do you learn most comfortable? Is it at home? A coffee shop? Or library? Where do gestate the best and retain the most information you learn? Learn best by finding the place your most comfortable but not easily distracted. 3. Think of possible questions or applications of what you learn as you learn. While you think and gestate the information you learn, you need to make connections between what you learned to what you will learn by thinking up questions you have of what you did learn and what you hope to learn in the next bout of learning. This helps connect the information to your mind, storyboarding it. Another technique is to think of ways you could apply this information to the real world and what you do on a regular basis. This will help cement the information to concrete examples. 4. Write summaries (How-To Lists) of what you learn in your own words. Having reflective traits myself, this blog is the epitome of this technique. Taking in new information, learning it, applying it to gain experience, and then finally writing a blog about it to show my understanding. This is the basis of what all reflective learners must do. If we didn't cover your learning style this week. No worries. All will be covered in good time. Next Week: #2: Learn-to-Learn (Part 2 – Sequential and Global Learning Techniques) See you then.  #1: Figure-Out your learning style. If no free class exists, it’s time to build your own. But before you do, you have to know what your learning-style is. Because if you don’t, you could be finding learning tools that are useless to you because you don’t learn in that particular way. A good example is people who learn hands-on versus people who learn conceptually. People who learn conceptually like to use graphs, figures, maps, and other tools to learn a concept, and will tell hands-on people that that is the only way to learn. Whereas hands-on people like to see how something is done with the help of another person to show them what’s right. Finding out what type you are is important to your learning success and completing your own self-study. To find out your learning style take these two questionnaires and combine them to see what styles best compliment you. 1. The Vark Quiz – Short Form with quick summary of your learning-style 2. Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire – Long Form with in-depth analysis of your learning style After you take these quick questionnaires. You will find out if your learning-style is active or reflective, sensing or intuitive, visual or sensing, and sequential or global. With each of these styles comes specific techniques that work best with that type of learner as well as others that work with all. That will be covered in later. Now let’s go over each style of learner and their strengths and weaknesses. 1st Spectrum of 4 that details how you like to learn. Does this sound like YOU? Don’t like to be lectured? Hate being forced to sit there without any active participation? Then you have active learner tendencies. Because active learners like learning to be participative and interesting. Which is why you will have a kid who can remember every stat and name of his favorite baseball team, but can’t will never remember anything about the state capitals. Because one is active and can be discussed with friends while the other is taught dryly with no entertainment value. Or does this sound like you? Don’t like when other people talk during lectures? Or when you’re studying? Hate every time someone asks a question or slows down the class? Then you have reflective tendencies. Being the opposite of active learners. You don’t want people to interrupt your process of listening, thinking, and digesting of information. Where an active learner wants to use the information immediately, a reflective learners wants to reflect upon the information and use it later.  2nd Spectrum of 4 that details how you like to learn. Does this sound like you? Like to memorize? Learning facts and figures? While using the techniques you have always used? Not liking when things get outside your scope? Then you’re a sensor. You like repetition, memorization, and well established methods, formulas, and procedures that work so you don’t have to think. You enjoy things that already work with no problems and issues that you can reuse again and again on old and new situations. Or does this sound like you? Like challenging new problems? With the ability to think outside the box to find new solutions? Then you are an intuitive learner. You enjoy taking on new challenges and enjoy figuring them out, both their problems and solution. Even if either haven’t been figured out yet. Intuitive learners learn usually conceptually and theoretically.  3rd Spectrum of 4 that details how you like to learn. Does this sound like you? Like to learn by actually seeing something done? Not told, but physically shown from A to Z? Then you’re a visual learner. And the reality is. Most people are. Visual learners learn by seeing How-To Videos, on-the-job training, and flowcharts, graphs, and other visuals that help implant images to memory. Or does this sound like you? Do you learn by reading and writing? Without having to be shown how to do it, but told? Then you are a verbal learner. Verbal learners are able to understand how to do things by reading how others did it or being told how they did, and independent from having to actually being shown how to do it. Entailing they are better at figuring out the minute details that may not be as explicit as seeing how it is done.  4th Spectrum of 4 that details how you like to learn. Does this sound like you? Like to learn step-by-step? In a logical sequence? Each step building on the next until it all finally makes sense? If you do, you are a sequential learner. This type of learner loves step-by-step processes and learns logically by learning the basics and fundamentals of a subject. Building upon the subject by stacking new information on top of each other until the whole picture is known. Or does this sound like you? Like to immerse yourself in the information? Learning randomly until you have that “eureka” moment? Then you are most likely a global learner. Someone who likes to learn everything about a subject, but in no particular order until one day it all clicks together and you master the subject. The major difference between the two is that sequential learners are able to use the information relatively immediately to take a test while it takes a global learner a certain period of time to let it conceptualize before they can effectively take a test on it. Because the information doesn’t make any sense to you until it clicks in your mind.  Conclusion
But like every spectrum, everyone has more and less the tendencies of each type. As many people display both. It just matters which way you lean more and knowing the best ways to take advantage of your own combination of learning styles to maximize your learning return to become a meta-learner. For example: An active/reflective learner may like to participate in group work to get feedback from others in the group, but want to do their own work alone and bring it to the group roughly completed. A sensing/intuitive learner is someone who likes to use established-methods to figure out problems, but likes to change-it-up to see if the established method can be made better. A visual/verbal learner may learn best by combining both words and pictures so they can read the steps as they see them being done. Helping them learn that much faster. And finally, a sequential/global learner may be able to learn sequentially, but only if each presented topic is fully discussed without pieces missing. Now check us out next week when we take what we have learned so far and use it to find the best learning techniques that will work for your particular learning-style. Labeled… #2: Learn-to-Learn: A Guide to Find the Best Techniques for Your Learning-Style. Best, L. Thomas Reference for Learning Styles: http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/ILSdir/styles.htm |
AuthorLucas Thomas, professional writer, entrepreneur, and business owner. Archives
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