Secrets of Effective Learning Practice in School and Work

Taking into consideration factors including the type of subject matter, your personal background and the situation under which you are acquiring knowledge, you will be able to develop your own effective learning practice.

Based on learning principles, the following learning practice tips will help you develop the best learning practice that applies to you.

1. Look for Important Portions of the Study Material

The first step in studying anything is knowing what are its important portions and aspects. This will save you time and effort and accelerate your learning. Before going into thorough study -- scan the whole material and identify its important portions. After this, you may proceed with going through the whole material by giving less time and effort on less important portions and more on the important ones which are highly likely to be given by your professor the corresponding emphasis in lecture and examination.

2. Cultivate New Viewpoints on Learnings That Contradict Your Previous Concept

When you encounter principles or theories that contradict your personal concept on a certain subject matter, develop a new mindset regarding it. It is not enough that you merely accept it because it will be reduced to memorization and will have a high percentage of being forgotten.

3. Practice Makes Perfect, Repetition is the Mother of Learning

After understanding the principles and theories that you formerly had a contradicting perception, putting it to practice or applying it repeatedly will be helpful. This will reinforce your true learning.

4. Solicit Comments and Suggestions

Ask other people like your professor if you are a student, your immediate superior in work or colleagues or peers for comments and suggestions on the output in which you applied your learning. Request them to analyse your work and tell you their observations.

5. Set Expectations and Goals for Yourself and Ask Your Professor or Supervisor for Their Expectations of You

First, you can hardly learn anything if you do not have the confidence that you will be able to do so. So tell yourself that you can learn the material at hand. Then after some time, set expectations and goals on your learning like increasing scores in school or more output in work. Next, ask your professor or supervisor of their expectations of you. They might have higher ones but have valid reasons for not telling you.

Educational Learnings

Writing Beats Reading in the Learning Contest

Will you agree with me when I say, “We learn a lot when we write?” Most people know (know – to differentiate from believe and think) that people learn a lot when they read. For me, people do learn a lot more when writing than when reading.

You could argue with me; why not? Learning is getting information. Reading is getting information through optical signals to the brain; while writing is probably the exact opposite as it is transmitting information from your brain through the muscular veins of your hand.

But what some people overlook is that learning is a process. It does not stop at getting information. Learning is the process of accumulating knowledge in an unending cycle of getting information, synthesising them through comprehension, retaining and reinforcing them through application and use which may be repetitive or not and desiring to get more information. And so the cycle repeats again and again.

When people write, they apply and use the information they have gathered and so thus reinforcing the learning process. They also discover or realise they need to know more; they research. While doing the research, they also gather information not necessary to their writing task but are related to it and can be stored and developed into knowledge later. And so the desire or interest to get more information which is a phase in learning comes in. It consequently leads to getting more information and setting to motion the cycle of learning.

Learning more when writing can be observed in someone simply opening the dictionary (internet or printed press). Essay and other written assignments in school or work are the best manifestations of learning, more when writing. When students, writers and other persons are assigned writing tasks, more often than not, they are going to research which is not limited to reading – which includes, listening, watching, feeling, tasting, smelling and some other forms of observing to get information.

Educational Learnings