Category Archives: learning

How we learn, what can you do to learn more faster

You have to be joking – learning fun!

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A famous scientist was on his way to a lecture in yet another university when his chauffeur offered an idea. “Hey, boss, I’ve heard your speech so many times I bet I could deliver it and give you the night off.” “Sounds great,” the scientist said. When they got to the auditorium, the scientist put on the chauffeur’s hat and settled into the back row. The chauffeur walked to the lectern and delivered the speech. Afterward he asked if there were any questions. “Yes,” said one professor. Then he launched into a highly technical question. The chauffeur was panic stricken for a moment but quickly recovered. “That’s an easy one,” he replied. “In fact, it’s so easy, I’m going to let my chauffeur answer it!”

Okay it might have made you smile rather than laugh out loud and it may not be the best joke you have ever heard, but it will have changed your mood and as a result made you more receptive to learning.

The facts

But how does this work? Dopamine is the chemical neurotransmitter most associated with attention, memory storage, comprehension, and executive function. Research indicates that the brain releases more dopamine when you play, laugh, exercise and listen to stories. (Depue and Collins 1999).

Interestingly making learning fun also reduces stress which can impede the learning process.

During periods of high stress or anxiety, functional MRI studies show increased blood flow to the “emotional” portion of the limbic system. When the amygdala (part of the limbic system) is in this state, neural activity in the rest of the brain is profoundly reduced (Xiao and Barbas 2002; Pawlak et al. 2003).

But learning is not fun!

Of course something that is fun to one person may not be fun to someone else. And what do people do to have fun? One answer to this is they play games, in fact there is a whole industry built around playing games to learn, unsurprisingly and somewhat disappointingly its called game based learning (GBL)

A game is said to have several key elements.

1. Competition – The score keeping element and/or winning conditions motivate the players and provide an assessment of their performance. Note that players are not necessarily competing against each other. In fact, a lot of games have players working as a team to overcome some obstacle or opponent.

2. Engagement – Once the learner starts, he or she does not want to stop before the game is over. This engagement is thought to come from four sources: challenge, curiosity, control, and fantasy.

3. Immediate Rewards – Players receive victory or points, sometimes even descriptive feedback, as soon as goals are accomplished

Can learning be fun, yes of course and making it into a game is a great way of doing it. It might be as simple as writing the questions for a quiz based on a subject to be examined and testing a group of friends. Setting the quiz from a learning perspective is probably better than answering the question. Keep to the rules above though, so make sure you offer a reward.

Also it might be American football, which I have to admit I don’t understand, but if you do you will love Financial Football click here to play, its a free online game with cool graphics that aims to teach money management skills.

Have a revision party

Okay the idea might sound a little of the wall but watch this short video, it looks like fun to me…

Ps the loud one is my daughter.

And the outtakes 

Want to find out more then read this article by Dr. Judy Willis who is an authority in brain research and learning.

And just for fun Dawn French and the accounting joke.

There’s no such thing as a stupid question – Learning by questions

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Ask questionsThe Greek philosopher Socrates was born 469 B.C in Athens, and died in 399 B.C. He is considered by many to be one of the world’s greatest thinkers. He is known for the Socratic Method and the pursuit of knowledge. The Socratic Method involves asking a series of questions until a contradiction emerges invalidating the initial assumption.

Socratic questioning does not seek to find THE answer, there are often many answers. The primary goal is to explore the contours of often difficult issues and to teach critical thinking skills. This method encourages you to go beyond the simple memorising of facts, enabling you to develop a higher level of understanding.

Socratic questions

1. Questions for clarification – Why do you say that?
2. Questions that probe assumptions – What could we assume instead?
3. Questions that probe reasons and evidence – What would be an example?
4. Questions about Viewpoints and Perspectives – What is another way to look at it?
5. Questions that probe implications and consequences – What are you implying?
6. Questions about the question – What was the point of this question?

If you can formulate a question – you have 60% of the answer
When you pass one exam the bad news is you are often faced with another. Exams at times can seem endless. But as you progress, what you are asked to do will change. When you first start studying a subject you will be asked relatively simple questions such as, what is the capital of FranceChildren are good at asking questions. To answer questions like this you need little more than a good memory. However when you get to the final level, examiners are more interested in understanding and application, not simply knowledge. What they really want you to do is think….

And so you may need to form an opinion, a view of your own. I am sure that you have many opinions now, but how informed are they, what facts support your view and how much have you thought around this view sufficient that you can deal with challenge.

This is where asking good questions can really help. When studying on your own, if you can formulate the right question you are more than half way to answering it yourself. Because to even get to this question, you will have had to think deeply about what you are trying to do, how it might work, what resources you might need, why has no one done this before etc. And only when you have thought this deeply will you be able to ask your question.

The next step is to post your question on the internet, someone will have the answer, the interesting thing is, by the time you come to do this, you may have the answer yourself!

Questions really are a great way of learning.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
Voltaire

The last word will go to Scott Adams
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?

Or should it!

Blogging to learn – Learn to Blog

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12-bloggers-for-2012[1]Writing a blog can sometimes be a challenge, and sometimes a joy. Yet I have to admit I am not always sure as to my motives for writing one. Why would you want to share your thoughts on a particular subject with the world?

In years gone by it seemed everyone wrote letters or kept diaries. Now people keep in touch using social networks and only politicians keep diaries, needing them for the inevitable autobiography.
 

Never talk to strangers

Maybe blogging fills a void left by the letter writers and diarists of the past, being both a record of your thoughts and a means of communicating with others, even if you don’t know them.

Motives for blogging

There are said to be more than 180 million blog pages in existence, that sure is a lot of motivated people, but why do they bother?

Here are a few reasons and many of them are related to learning.

• Firstly It’s a great way to learn – one reason that making notes is so helpful when trying to learn is that you have to externalise your thoughts and physically write something down, blogging is no different.

• It helps clarify your thoughts – the process of writing also helps clarify exactly what you think, it gets you to question what you know, and as a result you begin to develop a deeper understanding of the subject or topic. Micro blogging (Twitter) is especially effective, not only do you need to be clear in what you want to say, you have to be incredibly concise, less than 200 characters in fact. And yes that includes spaces, full stops etc.

• It becomes a permanent record – others will of course be able to see what you have written but so can you. This means you can look back and reflect on what you thought at a point in time. A modern day diary! Published in weekly or monthly installments

• You become an expert – the more you think and write, the more you engage in something, the better you get. In order to support your views you will probably need to undertake a certain amount of research to check your facts. This again is something that will expand and deepen your knowledge. Remember you can add videos and pictures to the blog; it makes it far more interesting when you do.

• Do you have something to say – ever had a thought in your head and just needed to write it down? Ever had an opinion or a view and wanted to share it with others to get their reaction? A blog is a great medium to express your views and provides you with a much wider audience.

• You get feedback from others and intern learn from them – so having shared your view, the blog becomes a focal point for debate, allowing others to comment on what you have said. Perhaps challenging your views, teaching you new things and forcing you once more to think more deeply.

Learning blogs

You can blog about pretty much anything, but if your studying why not blog about the subjects or even the techniques you find work best when it comes to learning.

Every day you go to University, college or school you come across something new, let the events of your day inspire you. Happy Blogging!

Want to Learn more – wikis and blogs

Chunking

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Whenever I deliver an exam technique or memory course I always come away feeling I have learned something, although I do of course hope it was not just me!

Last week was no exception; it was the memory technique course. Now I have written in the past about memory techniques, but last week one specific topic stood out, chunking.

One of the problems with learning any subject is that often you are faced with such large volumes of information it seems impossible to learn. This is not dissimilar to the position that memory champions find themselves, for example one of the tasks they have to undertake is to memorise a pack of cards.

How long would it take you, 30 minutes, 2 hours, maybe it’s not possible?

Well it is possible and you can do it in 24.97 seconds, don’t believe me, then watch this video.

So how is it done?

Well the first thing to say is it takes practice; secondly it uses some of the principles of memory, chunking, visualisation, and association. You break the task down into a series of smaller tasks, e.g. remember each separate card (chunking) then create a unique image of each card and finally put the events into a structure you are already familiar with, let’s say your journey to work (association).

Listen Professor Winston and Andi Bell world memory champion in 2002 explain more.

Chunking in a bit more detail

I have promoted the benefits of visulisation in previous blogs so let’s focus on chunking.

Look at these letters for 30 seconds

BAADHLWWFCBBACCA

Look away from the screen and write down as many as you can.

Now look at these letters

ACCA CBB WWF DHL BAA

Look away from the screen and write down as many as you can.

You should find that you did better at the second list, one because some of them are already familiar to you BAA – British Airways, but most importantly because they were broken down into smaller chunks.

It works for study as well

Chunking is not only a useful memory technique but a great way to study. When faced with a new subject, start by breaking it down into smaller chunks then priorities those chunks as to which is the most important. This would normally be the most examinable. You then focus on that chunk, don’t worry about all the other topics; just concentrate on that one, and when you have done that move onto the next etc.

And finally

The guy that broke the world record is Ben Pridmore from Derby in the UK

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Enjoy the break

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As July comes to an end and attempts to reprieve itself with a little sun it also means that the exam season is over for many, at least for a short time. But what should you do with this time off, what is the best use of time after exams?

I have always been interested by the idea that I am sure was in an updated version of Tom Peters and Bob Waterman’s book, In Search of Excellence, first published in 1988. This was a book about what made American companies great. But rather than building ideas from first principle, it looked at successful US companies and worked backwards in order to find common themes, a simple modeling exercise.

What I found of particular interest was the updated chapter that I believe was called, the price of excellence. In this chapter they argued that to be excellent you have to make sacrifices, having a balanced life was all well and good but it did not lead to excellence, excellence required to some extent obsession. As I watched the opening of the Olympic Games last night I wonder how many of those athletes had a holiday or were at home every night to kiss their children good night, how many sacrifices had they made.

“No man ever reached to excellence in any one art or profession without having passed through the slow and painful process of study and preparation”

Quintus Horatius Flaccus – Roman Poet

But this is not an argument for obsession, well maybe short spurts of obsession, with rest and variety in the middle. The brain needs sleep and ideas need fertilising, sometimes connections and understanding come when you are least expecting them.

So go on holiday, engage in different activates, and challenge your understanding of what is around you but most of all have a great holiday…

Final thoughts

Excellence in the opening of the London 2012 Olympic games.

And just for sheer entertainment a fabulous presentation by Marco Tempest telling the story of Nicola Telsa, “The greatest Geek who ever lived.”

Are you taught in the most efficient & effective way? – The flipped classroom

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To pass any exam you need to learn in the most efficient and effective way but only part of that is down to you the student, much is about the way in which you are taught.

Little has changed in the way knowledge has been transferred over the years. Initially teaching was one person talking to a few people; let’s call this the Neanderthal approach, the first classroom? Then we had a major innovation the printing press, around 1450, which made it possible for knowledge to flow around the world, all be it slowly, no email in those days. But with the advent of the computer in 1837 (Charles Babbage) or 1942 (first digital computer) or the first PC, IBM 1953, the ability to store and transfer information to the masses was possible. Yet little changed in the way we were taught, until now.

Now we have both online and classroom learning. But what is best way to learn, what is the most efficient and effective way to transfer knowledge?

The lecture

If you think of a traditional lecture, the lecturer stands at the front and talks, the student makes notes and then goes away to read and perhaps actually learn something about the subject.

The online approach

A mass of content is available online, you can watch the very best lecturers from all around the world, stopping and starting the presentation to suite the speed in which you learn. Or perhaps you have a sophisticated e learning course where activities are carefully constructed to explain what you need to know. But this can be lonely and despite the claim that online is the same as being in a classroom, from my experience it is not, it is different.

The blend and the flip

But is the best method to have a blend of both online and Classroom / Lecture Theater. This is the idea behind the blended course. Attend the lecture and then watch some online instruction later in the day perhaps. However much thought needs to be given to how this works, directing students to random You Tube clips is far from ideal. Yet it feels like a move in the right direction.

And now the Flip – The flipped classroom (2004 ish) takes its name from the idea that content has historically been taught in the day and students expected to apply that content in their own time for homework.  But is making notes in class the best use of that face to face time? Should students not watch the lecture on the evening, benefiting from studying at their own pace and then attend class the next day, where they can ask questions? Can we flip the process?

In class the lecturer or teacher can then bring the subject to life using real world examples, answer student questions and deal with individuals on a one to one basis.

It’s not perfect, but it is better

Okay it is far from perfect and it has yet to be proven over time. But it does seem to make a lot of sense and for the first time we may be seeing the power of the PC complementing rather than competing with the classroom.

Oh and it has some powerful supporters Sal Khan & Bill Gates

Watch this for a great explanation why flipping the class is a good idea

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Sleep, picture, talk – learn smarter

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Three stories caught my eye this month that I thought might be of interest.

They are all ways in which new research is providing evidence as to how it is possible to learn more effectively, a kind of smart brain learning.

 

 

Sleep is good for study

A new study from the University of Notre Dame suggest  that sleeping soon after learning new material is best for recall. This clearly has implications for students in those latter stages of revision and arguably the night before the exam.  The answer it would seem is that you can study right up to the last minute (probably memorising  facts) as long as you are getting a good night’s sleep after wards.

Although it is not known with certainty why sleep is so good, it is believed that it brings some form of consolidation of the facts, a kind of updating and reorganising of the brain while you rest.

The idea is not that new, this research was out in 2004

Pictures are better than words

This might come as no surprise to people who have read this blog before but it is reassuring that there is some science to support the view that the brain is more effective with pictures than words.

A story from the BBC about a group of people who had their brainwaves scanned while completing a series of tasks, individually and in groups, to see if data visualisation, presenting information visually, in this case a series of mind maps can help. The results showed that when tasks were presented visually rather than using traditional text, individuals used arround 20% less cognitive resources. In other words, their brains were working a lot less hard.

The research was carried out by Mindlab International, an independent research company that specialises in neurometrics – the science of measuring patterns of brain activity through EEG, eye tracking and skin conductivity, which tracks emotions.

This is not just another plug for mind maps, they are just one way in which information is presented visually. When reading a book or study manual, put information in boxes, use graphs, draw people and objects, make it look visual, it will all help.

The first sign of madness – talking to yourself out loud

Gary Lupyan, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison often found himself talking out loud so he thought it might try to find out if it helped, and guess what it did.

In one experiment, volunteers were shown 20 pictures of various objects and asked to look for a specific one, such as a banana. In half of the trials, participants were asked to repeatedly say what they were looking for out loud to themselves, the others were asked to remain silent. The researchers found self-directed speech helped people find objects more quickly by about 50 to 100 milliseconds.

Most people talk to themselves when studying, but they don’t say the words out loud they keep it inside their heads. What this research suggests is that what you should do is say the words out loud, use different voices even. I know it sounds strange but it does work. Okay maybe you should do it behind closed doors; you don’t want to upset the neighbors…..

 

 

 

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Deliberate reading – How to read technical content

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In his book Five Minds for the Future Howard Gardner identifies one mind as the Synthesising Mind. He describes this as the mind that takes informationfrom disparate sources, understands and evaluates that information objectively, and puts it together in ways that make sense to the synthesiser and also to other persons.

We live in an age where knowledge is not hard to find, just Google something and you will find no shortage of information on any subject. The skill or mind that you need to develop is to be better able to filter information focusing only on what is important and ignoring what is not. 

But there is just too much!

As a student at some point you will find yourself having to read a book that contains masses of information that you need to learn but given the volume probably not able to absorb. You will need to filter the information, reduce it down into manageable chunks that can be understood and made sense.

As Gardner suggests, this understanding is initially for your benefit but eventually you will have to explain it to others, so the understanding needs to be deeper than simply knowing.

So we need a way in which you can both read and learn at a deep level. Children read instinctively using their finger, putting it under the words they are trying to say. Of course when they go to school using your finger to learn is not encouraged, so they stop. But there is good reason that children do this, you need to focus your attention and pointing or underlining is one way of doing it. Below is a step by step guide as to how to read technical stuff or in fact anything that you need to have a far better understanding than a few random facts.

How to read with your synthesising mind

1. Find the content page in your book and very loosely mind map or write out the chapter headings; see my previous blog on mind mapping. Do this IN THE BOOK, okay you will have to write on the book and that might feel uncomfortable, but you need the information all together and the book is the best place to store it. This will help you gain an overview of what is to come. Your brain will already begin to put some shape to what you are about to learn and begin to make linkages.

2. Read each chapter, but underline the key points, try to underline key words and not huge paragraphs. This in itself will help you start to focus on what is important. Yes it will slow you down but you are not just reading you are learning. Knowing what the key points are is not easy so you will have to concentrate, however don’t spend forever, often your gut instinct is the right one.

3. Write in the margin your understanding of the key points or even just copy out what is in the book. The purpose of this is to reinforce the knowledge and to make it stand out even more. It is better if you have to think about what is said in the context of what you are trying to learn and write it out in your own words. However you don’t always have time, so never be afraid to simply copy.

4. Mind map or summarise all the key points that you have written in the margin within the chapter at the front of that chapter. This is your chance to show how it all fits together. Double check your summary with the one that is in the back of the chapter, this will make sure you don’t miss anything. Now of course what you could do is just read the summaries at the end of each chapter and if you are really short of time this can be very effective, however you will not learn from this, but it can be a better way of getting a more detailed overview than you would from the contents page.

5. Look at each of the chapter summaries and add to your initial overview of the book or simply re write the whole thing. This final summary or mind map will help consolidate your thoughts on what the really important points were, the key messages and aid your understanding.

Also in a few years if you pick this book off your shelf, or when you come to revise, it will be this summary that will bring everything flooding back.

And just in case your curious – the other four minds are

The Disciplined Mind

The disciplined mind has mastered at least one way of thinking – a distinctive mode of cognition that characterizes a specific scholarly discipline, craft or profession.

The Creating Mind

The creating mind breaks new ground. It puts forth new ideas, poses unfamiliar questions, conjures up fresh ways of thinking, arrives at unexpected answers.

The Respectful Mind

The respectful mind notes and welcomes differences between human individuals and between human groups, tries to understand these “others,” and seeks to work effectively with them.

The Ethical Mind

The ethical mind ponders the nature of one’s work and the needs and desires of the society in which he lives. This mind conceptualizes how workers can serve purposes beyond self-interest and how citizens can work unselfishly to improve the lot of all.

It’s a Wonderful Life – lifelong learning

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In 1946 Frank Kapra made what is arguably the best Christmas film of all time, it’s a Wonderful Life. It tells the story of George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) who on Christmas Eve gets drunk after being told that there is a warrant out for his arrest for bank fraud.  In a moment of despair he threatens to throw himself into an icy cold river, believing that this will solve all his problems. He is interrupted by Clarence, his guardian angel (second class) who appears and jumps into the water before him. George is forced to rescue Clarence but does not believe that he is his guardian angel and wishes that he had never been born.

And so the scene is set for Clarence to show George that the world would be a very different place had he not been born. Had he not saved his brother from drowning, stopped Mr Gower (the local pharmacist) giving out a lethal prescription and put his dream of travelling the world on hold to run the local bank (Savings and loan).

George was a man with ambition and drive, he constantly put others before himself, in every way a good man. But as can often happen he found himself in situations that he had not expected, arguably did not deserve, that at the time seemed impossible to solve.

Lifelong learning

We often think that studying is something that you do when you are young and then when you have learned everything by the age of say 25/30, you sit back and relax!  Of course this is not true, learning is a lifelong pursuit. It may not always have an exam at the end, but there are lessons to learn and successes and failures to deal with in equal measure. A Wonderful Life follows the ups and downs of George Bailey and in one way is sad because he never does fulfil his ambition to travel. But he learns so many other things along the way, perhaps most importantly that some of the smaller things you do have a huge impact on others and that when faced with apparent failure or disappointment there is always a solution, and it’s not jumping off a bridge…

So perhaps you didn’t get the exam results you wanted or didn’t get a place at university but this is only a moment in time. It is not the end of the journey; it’s just a different beginning.

Steve Jobs tells a great story about “Joining the dots” how you can only join the dots backwards not forwards. Had he not dropped out of Reed College and wondered into a calligraphy class one day then in Steve’s words “the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.”

So wherever you are in your lifelong learning class, have a very Merry Christmas.

A lesson for today’s bankers

When faced with the bank collapsing George Bailey put in his own money to save it. A modern day lesson for some of today’s greedy bankers perhaps. Sir Fred Goodwin, please note….

A beautiful mind or just a different one – Personalised learning

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My Daughter is sitting her mock exams at the moment, my wife is taking her to school just in case the train breaks down! And I have just finished teaching revision; only the dog seems unaffected by this November/December exams season.

Watching my Daughter study was interesting, she has discovered that you don’t need a white board to make notes, and just like John Nash (A beautiful Mind) has been writing on our dining room windows with a marker pen.  She also created a game where the answer was under a flap of paper and found that she learned more effectively when teaching someone else, me. Go on ask me a question about respiration or stem cells…..

I have written on the merits of learning styles before,”learning styles don’t work or do they,” but in that blog I focused more on how you process information rather than using differing methods to learn. For example making notes using mind maps rather than in a linear format or writing on the window rather than on paper…..  Different people learn in different ways and at different speeds. This is why there is a big push in education to personalise learning, to make it sufficiently flexible for each individual to learn in their own way.

The argument is that in the last century education was delivered in a style needed to prepare people to work in factories. It required little in the way of individual thought just the ability to perform simple repetitive tasks, the same as everyone else. As a result pupils were all taught in the same way, sat in rows, repeating the same thing over and over again, and dressing alike. Okay a bit Orwellian and not entirely true, there have always been great teachers, but you get the point.

But now we live in a world that is constantly changing, problem solving is highly praised and keeping up to date with the latest information or developments is essential. So learning needs to change.

Different ways to learn

There are of course many ways to learn, but below are a few tips and hints.

  •  Making notes – writing something down is an incredibly powerful method of learning. Some people like mind maps, others prefer lists or bullet points and why not try Concept Mapping. The key point, just write it down.
  • Cards – reducing down what you have to learn and put it onto small cards. This is great for individuals who like to rearrange information, putting the most important first or eliminating what has been mastered.
  • Get a learning habit – make a routine out of what you do so that you perform a task without thinking. Learn one new fact before you go to bed, always have a book to hand or have notes on your mobile so that when you are on the train everyday you can study for 20/30 minutes.
  • Talk out loud – okay people may think you are a bit strange but listening to your own voice can really help.

Of course not all of the above will work for everyone that’s why you are you, an individual, the secret is not to give up if one method does not work.

Ps other great films about learning

Good will Hunting and the best of all Dead Poets Society

Let me know your favourites?

Not fast food – fast learning

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Last week I presented a live on-line lecture to about 250 students who had registered to attend the course, the subject How to learn faster. 

So I thought it might be interesting to devote this blog to a summary of the key points from that presentation.

 

Accelerated or fast learning

Accelerated leaaning is a collective term for a series of practical approaches to learning. In many ways it is simply an explanation of the way in which you learn, the logic being that if you understand how information gets into your head you will be able to speed up individual parts of that process and so learn faster. Let’s have a look at what is involved in the accelerated learning process.

How we learn – or at least one version

Take a look at the picture on the right, focus on the information arrow. This represents what you are trying to learn, you receive that information either Visually, Auditory or Kinaesthetically (smell touch taste) see July blog.

Learning tip 1 – Use all of your senses. When learning think about the best way of processing information, if it doesn’t make sense having read it a few times, then why not draw a picture?

One of the big problems with learning is motivation and the secret to motivation is to set goals and have Outcomes. Before you start learning think what your objectives are both short and long term then write them down.

Learning tip 2 – Write down your learning goals but make them positive and within your power. It is no good writing down I want to pass an exam when you cannot control that. Better to write that you will practice 4 questions tonight, now you can do that.

Next focus on the Practice arrows – Practice is vital. You can’t get away from the fact that the more you practice the better you get, see August blog on deliberate practice.

Learning tip 3 – Practice practice, practice….and practice again

Now look at the first of the 3 pink bubbles, MIT. MIT stands for Multiple Intelligence Theory – Don’t ask how intelligent you are, ask which intelligence you have. Howard Gardner suggested that there were 8 different intelligences, ranging from musical to logical to interpersonal.

Learning tip 4 – Don’t get hung up about intelligence, it doesn’t help, chances are your average. There are lots of types of intelligences and you may not like maths/logical subjects and are better at the written/linguistic papers. If you’re not good at maths just work harder at it, but have confidence that you are good at many other things. Intelligence is not one thing that you either have or don’t, it is more complicated.

Second of the pink bubbles is – State. State is another word for frame of mind. If you are not in the right frame of mind then you won’t learn quickly.

Learning tip 5 – If you don’t feel in the right mood for learning, then change your mood. Get up walk around, make a coffee or remind yourself you have the exam in only two weeks time. That normally works! 

Memory is the third of the bubbles – Memory is not the same as intelligence, you can improve the speed at which you learn by using memory techniques.

Learning tip 6 – Learn and begin to use some simple memory techniques, mind mapping, acronyms and acrostics are a good start.

And finally in the white bubble – Reflection. No learning process is complete without thinking back over what you have learned. What might you do differently next time, can you explain what you have learned to others?

Learning tip 7 – Keep a learning log or at least take some time out of your day to think back on what you have learned.

It’s not magic but it will work

Accelerated or fast learning is not a magic built or a pill that you can take that will require no effort from you, but it is an explanation
of learning, that stops you thinking of learning as something that happens sometimes. It is just a process and the more you understand about that process the
faster you can learn.

As they say learning is not a spectator sport…..

 

I have just discovered twitter. You can follow me by clicking on the panel to the right. My initial thoughts were that it was a waste of time but I have found it very demanding to make your point in 140 characters and have picked up lots of new information from others, see everyone is learning.

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Exam results – what to do if you fail!

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August is an interesting month, for some it is the time to take a well earned holiday and so de-stress for others it is the month in which the exam results drop through the letter box or inbox and so a time to get stressed.

I have taken the easier of these two options and so have been on holiday, which for me is always a chance to read a couple of books. One of them was called Talent is overrated by Geof Colvin, senior editor for Fortune magazine. In the book Geof puts forward some interesting arguments as to the role talent plays in the success of people who by many would be considered exceptional, even gifted. He argues not so much that innate talent does not exist, more that successful people, those at the top of their respective tree, Tiger Woods (okay not personally – but he is still a great golfer) Warren Buffet, Bill Gates for example have other qualities, they worked hard, and practised a lot…..

Greatness does not come from DNA but from practice and perseverance honed over decades. The key is how you practice, how you analyse the results of your progress and learn from your mistakes.

What has this got to do with exam failure?

If you looked around your class and picked the best, brightest, most talented students, I bet they passed their exams. And the reason you failed was because you are not good enough, you are not talented!

Well here is the bad news, what Geof Colvin and in fairness many others have found is that it is often not down to talent, it is down to hard work and practice, and we are all capable of that. If you believe that your poor exam results were because of your lack of innate abilitiy then you are wrong. You are in fact creating what is called a fixed mindset, you begin to believe that you can’t affect your performance and so don’t try. What’s more it’s not all that good to believe you are naturally talented. Research has proven that if you believe that you do well because you are talented, when faced with failure you are more likely to give up. If you believe that you did well because of hard work and then you fail, you carry on but just work harder next time.

So what should you do?

Geof goes on to say that it is not just practice that matters but how you practice, you need to practice deliberately. He calls it deliberate practice and it should;

  • Be designed to improve performance
  • Be repeated a lot
  • Enable you to get feedback continuously
  • Be highly demanding mentally
  • Not be much fun

But what satisfies the above criteria…….. yes practicing using past exam questions. So if you were not successful in your exams, find out when you can re-sit then;

1. Take a deep breath, get out your notes from last time and draw a mind map or review the one you did for revision, sometimes it’s best to make a fresh start. This will remind you of what you have to cover and get you thinking about the subject again.

2.  Analyse the past exam questions (including the last exam) and find out what is examined the most then identify the areas you need to improve.

3. Start to practice these past questions using the answers for feedback, and no it may not be much fun but then you now that.

Failure – the only way to learn

Here is a great video by a guy called Derek Sivers, Derek is a professional musician and founder of a company called CD baby in the US. He makes an argument as to why we need failure because it is a major factor in how we learn and grow.

Final thought

I know at the moment that failing an exam can feel like the biggest disappointment in the world and that it may seem that your career is over before it really got started. But it is what you do next that really matters

As Michael Jordon once said “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying”

Inspirational true story…Never give up!

Congratulations on failing from one failure to another…

Learning styles – don’t work or do they?

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Much has been written about learning styles and in the world of education the very idea that there might be one “good way” to learn remains controversial.

The term which refers to the many ways in which we learn is often used interchangeably with ‘thinking styles’, ‘cognitive styles’ and ‘learning modalities’.

 

 

However, a number of researchers have attempted to break down the concepts and processes that underlie the term into three inter-related elements:

  • How you process Information – How you perceive, store and organise information, for example, VAK, visually, auditory, kinaesthetic.
  • The environment in which you learn – Your preference towards learning in a certain way, perhaps with others or on your own or in a certain setting or at a particular time of day.
  • Learning Strategies – Your use of differing methods to learn specific subject matter in a particular way. For example making notes using mind maps rather than in a linear format.

In this blog I want to concentrate on the first of these, how we process information, in particular VAK, however the observations are just as relevant to other learning styles.

 VAK – a preferred learning style

The argument is simple, everything you have learned at some point has come to you through your senses, but have you got a preference, is there one method that you as an individual are more receptive to than another? Do you for example prefer to look at pictures and diagrams  (visual) rather than listen to someone explain how it might work (auditory) or would you like to do something rather than talk about it (kinaesthetic).

Find out your learning style by taking this simple test

Learning style How we learn Learning tip
Visual seeing and reading Use mind maps and colours
Auditory listening and speaking Make an audio of your notes
Kinaesthetic touching and doing Practice questions.Build it….fix it….

But do learning styles work?

Watch this clip as Professor Daniel Willingham describes research showing that learning styles are a myth and that learning styles dont exist.

Baroness Susan Greenfield, Professor of Pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford University and ex Director of the Royal Institution has even been brought into the debate.

Writing in the Times Educational Supplement Magazine (29th July 2007), Susan Greenfield said that “from a neuroscientific point of view is nonsense” (the learning style approach to teaching) was nonsense. Humans evolved to build a picture of the world through our senses working in unison , exploiting the immense interconnectivity that exists in the brain, It is when the senses are activated together that brain cells fire more strongly than when the stimuli are received apart.” Abridged

Its learning about learning that matters

So, given this lack of consensus amongst researchers, why bother to consider learning styles at all?

The reason I would suggest that knowing about learning styles is helpful is not so that you can label yourself an “auditory learner” “theoretical learner” etc, this can narrow your ability to learn and even provide an excuse for poor performance, “I did not do very well at that because I am not that theoretical”. No it is to broaden your horizons and give you alternative ways of learning should you get stuck when trying to understand something.

Understanding more about how you (might) learn can really help. Imagine you are sat there at night reading and re reading a chapter in a book, clearly getting nowhere, becoming more frustrated at your own abilities. What if you stopped reading to yourself and begin reading out loud, thus changing a visual internal auditory style to a visual external auditory one. Susan Greenfield is right, we learn best when we stimulate the brain with all our senses and not just one of them. Understanding about learning styles is about creating more choice and flexibility, if one method isn’t working then change to another.

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No excuses FREE knowledge – The Khan Academy

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I look to do one blog a month, not  that demanding I know but enough for me. However I am so excited about what I am going to show you next I wanted to post something now!

Check out this link to something called the Khan Academy. The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organisation with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere, okay their words not mine but an impressive mission none the less. All of the site’s resources are available to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, or parent. The Khan Academy’s materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.

This is a great example of open or free content, knowledge that is available on the internet for free, so now you have no excuses you can learn anything for free………

Okay you can’t learn everything, there are ONLY 2,100 videos and there are issues, how good are the lessons, are they of the right standard and quality, are they up to date, how relevant are they in helping you pass your exam?

Equally the Khan Academy is not meant to be a substitute for structured learning. There is more to a course or a well written text book than simply knowledge.  Teachers motivate and focus attention, they identify what is important and what is not, they will link topics together in such a way that makes the whole subject easier to understand and follow. But this material can really help, it can complement a structured course so that teachers can free their time to support and show how the knowledge can be applied. And if there are specific topics that you have never understood, just check out one of the lectures from the library.

This is not of course the first website to provide free content and it is American, do they not know that Math’s has an S on the end! But it is pretty good and it’s not just me who thinks that, Bill Gates does too.

In a time when universities are increasing their fees to teach stuff, it might be that they need to reassess exactly what they are charging for, because if its knowledge, well why pay for that when you can get it for nothing! 

Watch this TED lecture given by Sal Khan the founder

And for my students not sure about earning per share EPS

Or the PE ratio

Or what market capiltalisation (wth an S) might mean

To pass an exam – do an exam

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To ride a bike - Ride a bike

Although the debate around the value of examinations (testing) is set to continue, new research from Kent State University in the US suggests that examinations aid learning by making the brain develop more efficient ways of storing information. Dr. Katherine Rawson, associate professor in Kent State’s Department of Psychology, and former Kent State graduate student Mary Pyc published their research findings in the Oct. 15, 2010, issue of the journal Science. 

“Taking practice tests – particularly ones that involve attempting to recall something from memory – can drastically increase the likelihood that you’ll be able to remember that information again later,” Rawson said. 

In the article titled “Why Testing Improves Memory: Mediator Effectiveness Hypothesis,” Rawson and Pyc reported an experiment indicating that at least one reason why testing is good for memory is that testing supports the use of more effective encoding strategies. In particular the brain comes up with mental keywords – called mediators – which trigger memories which they would not do when studying only.

 I have to say that this comes as no surprise to me nor would it to any student or anyone who has ever read a book on memory techniques.   It does however add some significant evidence to support the use of testing or mock examinations as a means of preparation for the real thing.

 To pass examinations you require much more than just memory techniques, and in many ways all this research* has done is show that you can recall certain words far more easily if you link them via another word, the mediator, and then test to find out if you can in fact remember them. But because you can’t pass an exam without remembering what you have learned it does mean that by spending a little more time in encoding the information and by testing yourself afterwards you must improve your chances of passing.

 To my mind the research still has some way to go in recognising the other benefits of doing practice exams or tests, and I should add looking at the answers. For example do they not give a very clear indication of the standard required, provide focus as to what is important and what is not, give a concise summary of key parts of the syllabus, show how the knowledge should be applied in the context of the question and improve your level of concentration knowing that you will be tested latter, I could go on.

 How does this help – some tips

 When trying to get something into your head, don’t just read it, although reading is a method of learning, it is not very effective when it comes to remembering. Reading is largely an auditory process; you say the words in your head. Ever heard the saying “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand”. At the same time as reading, underline the key words and make notes with those key words. The very process of extracting them from the text will help. Next you need to remember those key words, well why not link them with a story (A mediator) or with single words as illustrated in the study. There are several memory techniques that use the principle of association to link words, check out the “stack and link and number rhyme” systems. See video below for an example of how to use the number rhyme system.

 And then of course you need to test yourself and your ability to recall those key words afterwards.

 So be in confident and inspired that what you new has now been proven and that  tests are not just about finding out if you will pass or fail the exam, they are an integral and vital part of the learning process, and that’s a fact.

 *In the research they asked students to remember Swahili-English word pairs, such as ‘wingu – cloud and use a mediator (wingu’ sounds like ‘wing’ – the mediator, birds have wings and fly in the ‘clouds) to link the two.

For more thoughts on what this means – click 

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The E word – the book about how to pass exams

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E for Exam


I have to say that I feel a little self conscious writing about a book that I have written, yet it has taken up such a large part of my life for the last four years, I cannot let its publication go without saying something.

The E word is a book about exams and how to pass them, and part of my motivation to write it came from the simple observation that success or failure in the exam room was becoming increasingly important. Increasingly important because unlike in the past, when there were jobs and opportunities available regardless of your academic record, this was not the case anymore.
My daughter was 11 at the time and was just about to sit her first really important set of exams. It seemed then and is becoming a reality that this was the start for her of 10 to 15 years, perhaps even longer, of sitting exams! That is a huge chunk out of someone’s life, and for my daughter and many others it was also the first time that her success and failure would be so ruthlessly measured.

There was also this somewhat elitist attitude to rank people in accordance with their exam record, pass and you are in the club, fail and you are not. And from there it gets worse; people begin to plan out your whole life based on what you did on a piece of paper for 3 hours. In some instance elevating you to the highest position, with comments like “he/she will go far”, “very bright, they have a great future ahead”, which is fantastic, but not so motivational if they say “not cut out for an academic career”, “not really bright enough”. It was as if the exam result was a crystal ball that people stared into to predict your destiny.

And based on what, the performance in an exam, and the result you get…….

This is not an argument to change the system nor am I suggesting that we do not need exams; it just brought home to me the importance of passing and the implications of failing.

But I had another motive; my job is to get accountancy students through their final level professional exams. To do this we use a whole raft of techniques that together with a lot of hard work by the students had proved very successful over many years. I was convinced that the techniques we used at this level could be of benefit to anyone who has to sit an exam. So I thought I would write them down and find out.

Run Forest run
Although not explicit in the book, there is a theme on which it is based and one that is important to me. In the film Forest Gump, Forest, the main character (Tom Hanks) is born with learning difficulties, he has an IQ of only 75 (90-110 is normal) yet despite this he manages to excel and ultimately achieve success, because of hard work, determination, clarity in his objectives, oh and with a little luck.

And that’s what this book is about, anyone can be successful, you have to play with the cards you have been dealt. To pass exams, intelligence (whatever that means) is just one factor. Everyone has it in them to pass, you just need the right mental attitude, knowledge of how the exam system works and techniques that will improve your performance.

And if you don’t have them, then buy the book………please

Available for £10.00 from all good book stores, or by following the link to Kaplan publishing

Just in case you forget the many ways that you can eat shrimp
Bubba: Anyway, like I was sayin’, shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. There, uh, shrimp kabobs, shrimp creole… shrimp gumbo, panfried, deep fried, stir fried. There’s pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp… shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich… that’s, that’s about it.

Exam focused learning

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Exam paper 1On the 20th and 22nd of October I will be delivering a one and a half hour webinar on exam focused learning.  So what this is and how it can help with passing exams is on my mind. It therefore seemed appropriate that this blog should be devoted to explaining a little bit more about it. For those that did attend the presentation and may well be logging on after the event, welcome back, I hope you will find this a useful reminder that may prompt you to add your thoughts or ask some questions. You can do this by clicking on the leave a comment link at the bottom of this blog.

Exam focused learning is a way of studying that places a much greater emphases on looking at specific topics rather than the whole syllabus and using examination answers as a key way to both learn and focus attention. I should also say that this approach is best suited for what I would call more traditional exam formats rather than multi choice questions and case studies.

Imagine you are about to begin studying a new subject, one that you have little or no knowledge. Let’s also assume that you are studying from home. What do you look at first, maybe the text book, you turn to the contents page and look at the 22 chapters that you are required to read and understand. Perhaps you then get a blank pad of paper, a pen, a coffee and begin by reading chapter one. You probably make notes as you go through so that you have something to re-read and revise from later. You go through the entire book making notes in this way and so in theory at least have begun to learn the subject.

The problem with this approach is that it takes a lot of time and although you feel that you are covering everything, you of course aren’t. You will almost certainly have to miss some things out or move more quickly through certain areas just to keep up with your timetable.  The other problem with this “Traditional approach” is that you will spend so much time learning you will have little time left for practicing exam questions.

Exam focused learning does not start with the text book; it starts with your objective. Let’s assume that this is to pass the exam, not learn the subject.  If you wish to pass, on the day of the exam you will have to answer the questions set by your examiner. Now imagine if you knew what these exam questions would be. If you did would you stand a better chance of passing, yes or no. I think yes. The only problem is that you don’t have the actual exam questions……but you do or can obtain lots of past exam questions, questions that have been set by your examiner before.

So here is the first important point, better to learn the answers to these than to learn pages of content from a text book that may or may not be relevant. Now of course this will not work in the complete absence of some understanding of the subject which will have to come from a tutor, lecturer or text book. But the clarity of direction that a question gives, the specific way it shows what you are meant to learn and the context in which something needs to be understood is invaluable.

The next problem, there are just too many past questions.  We really need to have fewer questions to study, at least to start with. By analysing past questions you should be able to identify which topics have consistently come up in the past, these we must learn. Then we look at topics that are likely to come up in this exam. We should be able to spot these in our analysis as being important topics that have not been examined for some time.  These should be learned. And finally we look at those topics that might come up, these are nice to learn.

And here is the second important point, on the face of it this sounds like question spotting but really it’s about focus it simply gives you a point from which to start.  By all means learn everything, but if you can’t or don’t have time, better to have studied and practiced questions on the most important areas and the ones most likely to be examined.

If you change your way of studying to this exam focused approach you will enter the exam room knowing what the three or four most important topics within your subject are. More importantly you will have practiced answering past exam questions on these areas and so will be very well prepared for what might come up. You should also have practiced some questions on the next three/four most likely topics for this exam. Now compare that with the student who has gone through the text book making notes but who due to time pressure had little or no time to practice past questions. Who do you think stands a better chance of passing……?

Exam focused learning….Done

Ps – next year my book currently entitled “The E (Exam) word” should be published. In it I explain in far more detail exactly how to follow the exam focused approach, what to do in the exam, how to cope with exam stress and  how to improve your chances of passing by using effective memory techniques.

Watch this space for more details 

Attention! – Breach of duty as a student

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Beam of light

Once again the FT has provided me with some food for thought. An article entitled why e-mail must disappear from the boardroom, Monday 27th July 2009, suggested that main board Directors should give all their attention to the meeting and less to the email that has just arrived on their Blackberry or similar electronic device.

In fact it suggested that by not giving all their attention to the meeting they could be in breach of their fiduciary duty to shareholders.  How would you feel if the surgeon who was about to cut you open was concentrating on an email rather than on you?

It went on to quote some research from Rene Marois a neuroscientist and Director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt university that the brain has an inability to concentrate on two things at once. The researchers even have a name for it “inattention blindness”.

Now think about this in the context of learning, if you are in a classroom or any other learning environment for that matter and you move your attention from the classroom to another event, a text or email perhaps, then although you are in the room you have put your attention elsewhere.

Yes you can hear what is going on and yes if someone called your name you could respond all be it slowly, but would your ability to learn and recall the facts from the lecture be as good, somehow I think not.  This is not to say that periodically you should not let your concentration drift as you begin to think about coffee or what you want to do at the weekend, this is a perfectly natural and in some instances a necessary form of relaxation that can help with learning. This is about being engaged, giving The Event your full attention.

Think of your attention as a single beam of light, able to shine on only on one thing at a time, it illuminates and makes clear that one thing but when you move the light what you were looking at becomes dark or at best not as clear, something in your periphery.

And so to the point, when you have an opportunity to learn, attend a lecture or meeting, give it your full attention. You are not being efficient by doing two things at once you are in fact only ever doing one. So if you do have two things to do but only time to do one, look carefully at what they are and prioritise. And if the email is more important give it all your attention and only after you have dealt with it come to class or attend the meeting.

One other point, you do not become invisible when on your mobile, everyone can see that you have your shoulders slumped in the so called “Blackberry prayer”. Now you might think that this sends a very clear message as to how busy and important you are, in fact it does the complete opposite. People think that you are not in control, probably fire fighting, a poor delegator and a poor manager. And yes it’s bloody rude……

Return of the accountant

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There was a time when people thought being an accountant was a particularly dull and boring profession. However the face of finance has changed, finance professionals are no longer required to simply crunch numbers or come up with reasons why projects won’t work. They are a key ingredient in the success of the company, required to develop ideas and look for new opportunities.  For this reason it is vital that both students and members look at the events around them in a more positive way, that is positive in the sense of what direction does this now take us and what opportunities do we know have rather than “I am sure this will work out fine”

Take an article written in the Sunday Times 7 June 2009 The video – Game Empire strikes back. In it Dominic Rushe reports on E3, the video games industry annual shin dig, where numbers have been falling and an industry that once thought to be immune from recession seems like an example of an industry living in its own virtual world and not the real one. 

In the article there are many lessons if only you look closely, for example, there is an implication that even though times are hard and yes the industry has had to make redundancies to cope with falling sales, if you continue to innovate and remain focused on your customers there is still much money to make. For students it is a great example of how the product life cycle operates – the gaming industry does seem to be moving into a mature market. It raises the issue that despite the confidence and great creativity in the industry, one of the main limitations is the industry’s ability to raise finance; games development can cost $30m. How many students whilst offering advice in their final level examinations put forward brilliant arguments as to why the company should do something yet forget to answer the very practical question of where will the money come from, we can’t have qualified accountants doing that.

And so to the point, we are living in changing times, with many challenges, companies need there finance team to be at their very best.  To be good, you still have to pay attention to the fundamentals, do we have the finance, will this add value, do our financial statements reflect our true position. But take inspiration from what you read and hear and think about it in the context of your objectives, be that to pass an exam or solve a particularly difficult business issue. Read with focus and direction and maybe one day you will be as good as Luke in return of the Jedi.

No more training do you require. Already know you, that which you need.

Yoda