If you are passionate enough to fulfill all those lofty goals that your parents and society have set for you then you need to practice the skill of learning. Now by that, we don’t mean you keep on studying and thinking without giving yourself a break. But we mean to develop such a strategy that will enable you to become intelligent enough to learn faster. So today, we will be sharing some top tips that can make learning easier for you.
Many students and professionals from developing countries can’t afford to get quality education from the best universities and top organizations. MOOCs providing free online courses with certificates of completion from these top universities and organizations facilitates such learners to get in touch with best professors and instructors in wide range of subjects, all around the world.
Recall from long term memory:
This is a very common tip that we always suggest to learners to make learning easy for them. Recalling from long term memory means when you’re taking a test, you need to repeat the same actions or be in the same environment when you were preparing for it. For example, when you take a quiz try to sit in the same room as you were in when you studied for that particular topic.
Break down longer topics into smaller chunks:
Chunking is another technique that makes learning comparatively easier for learners. If you have a long topic to learn, why not break that topic into bite-sized pieces so that your brain can easily digest the new information and can maintain it. A very simple example is remembering a phone number. Instead of learning the whole number at once, why not split it into different pieces and then try to learn them?
By giving spaced intervals:
If you want to make your learning easier, then make a habit of increasing intervals of time between revisions of previously learned material. To elaborate on this statement, whatever you learn and revise on a particular day, increase the time of revision for that particular topic for the next time. For example, if you have learned topic A on Monday and have revised it on Tuesday for 20 minutes, then increase this time to 30 or 35 minutes for the next time you revise it. It will fill in all the gaps you have for the topic and you’ll never forget it.
Write whatever you have learned:
Just memorizing by heart is not enough no matter how much time you put in. So what you should do is write whatever you have learned on paper. This will strengthen your memory and would help you not forget it.
Use multi-modal learning:
The more ways you discover for yourself to learn something, the fresher and less hectic your mind will be to learn something. You can use different ways like aurally, visually, kinesthetically, or any other that will more likely help you remember the content. For example, MOOCs always use a combination of quizzes, assignments, videos, and forum community interaction to add variety to the learning procedure.
Metacognition:
Metacognition is such a term that has been used by psychologists to describe the different ways we use to assess our strengths and weaknesses as learners. When you as a learner are able to recognize your limit of knowledge or ability or how much information you can grasp, you can then easily explore ways to expand and extend it. Therefore, you need to monitor the learning strategies that can help you prepare for new learning challenges proactively.
Understand the verbatim effect:
The reason why many learners fail to improve their learning skills is that they spend too much time and energy on learning the content word-to-word. So instead of doing this, you should paraphrase or summarize the important concepts and then try to write it in your own words without changing its sense. This will save a lot of strength of yours and keep your mind fresh and open to more content.
Conclusion:
These were some of the very effective tips that you can apply while learning. Following some of these tips will greatly improve your learning skills and make your learning process easier. So, read the topic now and know all about how to make your learning easier and How Online Learning can help LifeLong Learners and never stop learning.