Inspiration Through Information

Every so often I run across a spoken word piece that speaks to me. In this brilliant spoken word piece by Suli Breaks he tells it like it is regarding formal schooling’s squelching of intelligence, talent and dreams. I won’t tell you more. Just watch the video. It says it far better than I could here.

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“I’m a very organised and rational and linear thinker, and you have to stop all that to write a novel.” Hilary Mantel

Most of us were programmed early on starting with our very first day in school to think of learning as a linear process. In other words, the predetermined curriculum says first you learn this, then you learn this, then you learn this, and so on. Sometimes that is a fine way to learn things, but it is not the only way.

We are all innately curious and exploratory human beings. It’s built into our DNA that we quite naturally explore our world and learn as we explore. If you think about our more primitive ancestors and how they learned, it was not in a linear, planned fashion. Instead, they learned amid often tumultuous and challenging environments in which they had to react and adjust to the information they gathered along the way. In other words, they continually experienced something, decided if that was a good or bad thing, self-corrected if necessary, and tried something again until they got it right.

This is also why real-world experiences often teach us better than classroom-based instruction or other more formal methods of teaching. Real life situations engage that total immersion, self-correcting style of learning that’s an incredibly effective learning method. That is why things like apprenticeships are such great ways to learn something.

A modern variation of this learning approach is often termed reflective learning. Reflective learning is a kissing cousin of experiential learning. Reflective learning is the process by which you internally examine and explore an experience and the information inherent in that experience and that develops deeper meaning and context for the information learned. Through this approach to thinking deeply during your learning you are able to break information and experience down into its significant aspects, create meaningful links between theory and practice, improve your performance by using the results of your reflection to inform your future practice, and more deeply incorporate the learning by realizing the personal value of that learning. In short, reflective learning deepens and improves the learning experience.

So feel free to learn things in any order and manner that works best for you.

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“Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.” Plato

In instructional design and learning theory circles there is a famous, if somewhat troubling, fact that has plagued educators and instructional designers for years. The person who first identified this troubling fact was Hermann Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist who was a pioneer in studying memory and how memory ties to learning.

What Ebbinghaus discovered through his research is often referred to as the “forgetting curve.” In short, the forgetting curve demonstrated that students in a classroom tend to forget about 90 percent of what they learn in class within about 30 days. 90 percent, in just 30 days! Even worse, most of this forgetting occurs within the first few hours after class is over. So, that’s the bad news.

The good news is that Ebbinghaus also discovered that a student could improve the length of memory retention simply by repeating the information in timed intervals. And, logically, the more the repetition the more retention.

So what does this mean for the self-educator. Figure out ways you can repeat what it is you have learned regularly. This might mean repeatedly going over your notes, explaining to yourself out loud the information and concepts you have learned, telling others about what you have learned, creating your own flash cards you use periodically, repeating a particular skill over and over, and so on. Do whatever it takes to repeat, and repeat often.

As for when to begin repeating, I suggest you start immediately after you initially learn something. Why? Because research shows that thinking or talking about something immediately after it happens dramatically improves the retention of the information.

Always keep in mind that research shows that memory may not be fixed at the moment you actually learn it. However, if you utilize repetition and do such repetitions at regular intervals, you are much more likely to place that information in your brain in a more long-term form. Also, try to figure out ways to expose yourself to information and repeat it in smaller chunks rather than in huge streams. Optimal learning takes place when we gradually incorporate new information into our memory as opposed to trying to absorb it all in one fell swoop.

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The art of skimming is a too often denigrated skill. When I encourage people to skim a book, long article or any other type of reading, I am often met with stares of disbelief that I would encourage skimming over what must surely be important material. Well, I am most definitely encouraging skimming.

Skimming is not only a generally useful skill, but I think a vital one for good self-educators. Since I think skimming nonfiction books is a particularly useful form of skimming, let’s use the example of skimming a book about a subject you want to learn. Yes, of course you might want to read the book in its entirety, and in many cases I would encourage that, but there is tremendous utility in skimming a book first to lay a foundation. Especially if you are new to the subject area you are studying.

When you carefully skim a book, you are constructing for yourself a basic, foundational schema of the subject matter – a mental map of sorts. If it is a subject area entirely new to you, this mental map will help to organize your learning. It will help you identify high-level topic areas on which to focus your learning. It can serve as a simple introduction to the subject at the same time.

You might read the book’s introduction, then skim each chapter’s headings and sub-headings, perhaps reading the first sentence of each sentence below a heading to add a bit more depth to the overall architecture of the subject. Taking a few simple notes during this skimming process can produce a great outline that will guide your learning going forward. How can you proceed to learn something if you have not a clue what it is you are supposed to be learning in the first place. Skimming and the subsequent optional outlining gives you the foundation and structure to guide your learning in the right direction.

If you already know something about a subject, skimming still has a use. Skimming new material can augment your already existing mental map of the subject or create new mental connections between ideas, concepts and facts. It is by creating new mental connections between all that you learn that your knowledge and skill become most useful and also more likely to stick with you longer.

In his article Continue Your Own Learning and Development Jason Womack mentioned what is essentially a skimming technique for nonfiction books. He suggests three quick steps in the process. First, read the table of contents, glossary and index to familiarize yourself with the main topics in the book. Second, read titles, subtitles and any text that’s bolded or otherwise emphasized. Finally, read the first sentence of every paragraph to delve a bit deeper into the content. Womack claims that with this technique you can read the average business book, for example, in about an hour. He also wisely suggests that if you find something particularly interesting in your quick scan, go ahead and read more of that section. (Note: Fewer books today have glossaries and indexes, although you will likely still find them in books such as academic textbooks or other scholarly books.)

Womack’s advice is a classic example of a skimming methodology and a pretty good one that will serve any self-educator well if applied to their learning.

So foster your skimming skills. No, you are not wasting time when you skim. In fact, you are likely speeding up your learning by providing yourself with a much needed structure upon which to base your learning efforts.

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