What I Found to Be the Best Tips for Learning - An Assignment

What I Found to Be the Best Tips For Learning - A Student   Assignment Of the Coursera.Org Course "Learning How to Learn" by a student -me- Chris "Crispy" Garrah

What I Found Out:

I have a life long love of learning.  But the featured course at Coursera.org which I choose to take as an absolutely free course showed me that in my fifty years of studying that I really did not have the best study skills, at best they might be considered average or poor. This course is offered by Professors Dr. Terrence Sejnowski and Dr. Barbara Oakley through Coursera.org.

This assignment or presentation is for parents, friends and teachers who may benefit from taking their study habits to the highest level.

Really I have and had so many problems in studying that I am going to list them by number along with a solution.

1.  Not Being Able to recall where you obtained your information-yikes-Plagiarism!

This may not be critical if you use on-line sources and can Google an answer to help you where you got your material  But if you happen to crack open a book
the solution is to write down the name and author because it just won't work for you to bring up information that you can recall but you don't list a source only because you cannot remember - that is plagiarism - so avoid the deadly trap - and write down the book and author.  Just in case you inadvertently use something.  If you don't write down the sources of your material you may receive a luke-warm or failing grade where you thought you wrote something brilliant.  In this courses' assignments it is necessary to quote specific references.  ("Learning How To Learn"  Assignment Rules Posted)

2. Procrastination may have been my biggest problem

"Learning How to Learn" from Coursera.org emphasizes  that a person will avoid the temporary anticipated pain of studying and do something more pleasant.  Before I started this assignment I was in a cold sweat thinking about how close the deadline was.  Setting a timer for 25 minutes as featured in this course will get you started.  The talk by Dr. Oakley was especially helpful asw as the video of a student squirming in her seat until she got underway and apparently some of the pain went away.
Here is a good place to show these are not my ideas -  "The Pomodoro Technique" - Wikipedia says Francesco Cirillo developed this time management  technique in the 1980's.  And Professor Oakley in this course focuses on this technique for avoiding procrastination.  Other tips are shown to stay focused on studying.

3 A Collection of My Other Bad Study Habits

 I would re-read the material but in some case this could be "over learning" - italic term  from "Learning How To Learn".  Similarly, reading problem solutions and thinking I could solve the problems on my own.  Wrong!  Big mistake!.  It is much better to look away and come up with a solution.  That is a good time to look at the solution especially if the solution consists of many steps.
Dr. Oakley in the course mentions several techniques that are better :  read and recall instead of re-reading. 

Also emphasized in the course is the importance of sleep.  I could be mistaken but in the early weeks of the course a closeup of neurons show before and after sleep photos - where the neurons connections resemble to me anyway -intertwined trees.  Your neurons are changing branch shapes as you learn.  Your brain i rewiring as you sleep.  Am I wrong or am I right?  You really should sign up for this exciting course and excel at learning and your life.

My final thought:  Stressed throughout this course are terms like "diffused learning" and "focused learning".  In diffused learning your brain is continuing to work on your everyday problems as when you take a walk.  Exercise and sleep.  Important parts of learning and learning well.