Category: Uncategorized

Tiger Woods

Posted on January 12, 2023 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict  and Armen Keteyian

We are major fans of biographies—this is our favorite genre, so when we say that Tiger Woods is one of the best biographies we’ve ever read, it also means it’s one of the best books we’ve ever read.  (That’s really saying something, since we knew nothing about golf going into the book.)  From its opening pages at the scene of Tigers’ very public car wreck, and working backwards through his implosive career arc, Tiger Woods is a book that’s virtually impossible to put down. It’s hard to believe the authors could bring such great insight when they weren’t even able to interview their subject, but if anything, the book is probably even better for its dispassionate ability to delve into the thick of Woods’ increasingly aberrant life.  For parents, Tiger Woods provides a wonderful instructional manual on how not to raise your kids.  A must-read.

Live Panel Discussion with Barb—What Did the World Learn on Coursera in 2022?  

Join all-star instructors and industry experts Andrew Ng (Machine Learning), Barb Oakley (Learning How to Learn), and Charles Severance (Programming for Everybody) for a live panel discussion moderated by Shravan Goli, Coursera’s Chief Operating Officer. Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM US Eastern time!

Medical and nursing school students—and their teaching institutions—focus on improved learning

Lecturio provides courses for medical and nursing schools and their students around the world.  Barb worked with cardio-thoracic surgeon Peter Horneffer at Lecturio’s home studios in Leipzig to create the Durable Learning Course for medical and nursing school students to help them learn how to learn in the intense field of medicine.  Check it out!  And if you are with a medical school and are interested in tapping into Lecturio’s awesome body of health science courses, reach out to durable.learning@lecturio.com.  

Podcast with Paul Fenner, President & Founder of TAMMA Capital (and father of triplets plus one!)

TAMMA Capital founder and president Paul Fenner, CFP®, EA, ChFC, CRPS®, has the privilege of being the father of triplets and another daughter and having a beautiful and supportive wife. TAMMA was founded when Paul’s triplets were born.  Paul saw firsthand how his own family struggled with financial anxiety, and the challenges and pressures it caused. This is one of the reasons why he chose to become an investment advisor and build his firm to help bring peace of mind to TAMMA families. (The first letter of each of their first names results in TAMMA.) Paul and Barb’s podcast about encouraging your kids to learn is “must listen” for parents.

Learning Ideas Conference

Barb will be keynoting at the Learning Ideas Conference, an online event which focuses on “Creativity in Learning Design.” The conference brings researchers, practitioners, and others together to create new learning experiences, leveraging research from a variety of disciplines along with imagination and creativity. February 16, 2023, 7:00 AM – 6:00 PM Eastern time—see you there!

Retrieval Practice involves the Diffuse Mode (Default Mode Network)

We often tend to think that studying involves focusing actively on the materials being learned.  In other words, that studying is “focused mode.”  So it may come as a surprise to learn that retrieval practice—perhaps the most important study technique of all, moves the brain temporarily into diffuse mode as thinking shifts from external to internal focus during the retrieval process.  That’s yet another reason that the default mode network is so important!

That’s all for now. Have a happy month in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

The Scout Mindset

Posted on December 15, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Year!

The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t, by Julia Galef. Critical thinking has stood for decades near the top of the World Economic Forum’s “10 skills needed to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution.” A real standout for us amongst the hundreds of books on this vitally-important topic is The Scout Mindset—a book about being able to see things as they are, not as you wish they were. 

You can think about it this way.  Some people are like soldiers.  They are there to protect their own thoughts and the thoughts of their team.  It really doesn’t matter if those thoughts are well-founded or not, their job is to fight off any evidence that might be threatening to their position. As Galef, co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality, observes: “A scout is different.  Scouts are sent out to find out what is really out there—not what we want to be there.”  

If you are looking for a great holiday gift, we highly recommend The Scout Mindset—one of the best books on critical thinking we’ve encountered. 

A useful Twitter thread discussing metanalyses and growth mindset

In the past, we’ve been critical of growth mindset.  But this set of Tweets has encouraged us to be more open to the idea that, in some circumstances, growth mindset interventions may have modest value. [Hat tip Adam Trybus].  We like this observation from amongst the comments:   “Having a growth mindset probably matters. But interventions on growth mindset probably don’t work very well.” 

Duolingo burns its userbase

It’s a bit sad watching language-learning app Duolingo throw away its greatest feature—the variety of pathways learners used to be able to use for advancement.  Users are up in arms about the rigid new single pathway, but Duolingo CEO and co-founder Luis von Ahn is doubling down on the changes, convinced that the complaints will pass.  Self-determination theories of motivation in learning predict otherwise.  And indeed, despite her three years of consecutive experience, Barb has deleted her Duolingo account and is now joining thousands (millions?) of others in exploring other language learning platforms.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, Memrise, Babbel, Busuu, and other platforms are apparently experiencing overwhelming surges.

Short form version of Barb & Terry’s essay “The Promise of Habit-Based Learning”

Here is a short-form version of Barb & Terry’s popular essay on the value of habit-based learning. This essay turns the lens of neuroscience onto math education, showing how long-derided “rote” learning is actually extremely sophisticated and has an important place in education.  

Age of distraction: It’s not just the kids. Parents can’t focus either. 

Here is a useful article from the ever-interesting Deborah Farmer Kris on how to calm your increasingly distractable mind.  (We love how Deborah describes the “Pavlovian response”): 

“One of the most popular attention strategies is the Pomodoro Technique… Choose one task to work on (unitasking!), minimize distractions, set a timer for 25 minutes and go. After 25 minutes, take a brain break — step outside and get some fresh air, move your body or just let your brain rest and clear.  Then dive in for another 25 minutes. 

“I’m using this strategy right now. After my disastrous attempt at crafting the introduction, I turned on a favorite Pomodoro app — one that shuts down notifications on my phone. I’ve used this app so often in the last few years that my response is Pavlovian: My brain chatter settles down, my anxiety ebbs, my focus sharpens and I am suddenly able to engage with whatever project or article I’ve been procrastinating. 

“When I teach this strategy to students in study skills workshops (and when they actually try it at home) the response has been universally positive: “I finished my homework in half the time it usually takes me” or “I got a draft of my college essay written in 25 minutes after dreading it for weeks.”

Helping your gifted child to achieve their potential

It’s worth your while to read this blog post on how the founder of Mentava, a new  support platform for gifted kids, got 50 high profile angel investors to join their seed round.  We believe Mentava  is going to go far, because it is meeting the needs of gifted children being held back by today’s approach to education.  As the platform notes: “Gifted kids are dramatically underserved by today’s education system. Education policy heavily focuses on getting struggling students up to par, but isn’t concerned with whether high performers are achieving their potential. And the problem is getting worse: California’s DOE says no algebra for 8th graders, Virginia eliminates accelerated math before 11th grade, NYC competitive admissions switching to random lottery. ‍Whether during preschool, elementary, or beyond, Mentava provides students the opportunity to accelerate their learning when their school is unable to do so.”  If you have a gifted child (and isn’t every child gifted?), we encourage you to check out Mentava. [Hat tip: Lissa Hanckel]

You don’t need to necessarily be perfect in reviewing everything you are trying to learn! 

This worthwhile study “Selective restudy can reset recall of forgotten information,” reveals that restudying helps not only with remembering the material that’s been reviewed, but also helps with remembering related material.  This is a definite spirit-booster for those who can’t make it through everything they’d like to in a given study session! [Hat tip: Artur Wieczorek]

Birthdays and Thanksgiving

Well, we’ve got stuffing on our face with our posting about Thanksgiving, which is on the 4th, rather than 3rd, Thursday of November since, (ahem), 1942. Scout mindset matters!  [Hat tip: Cere Tabbert]

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

The Promise of Habit-Based Learning

Posted on November 21, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Monday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

It’s worth sending an unusual, “Cheery Monday” greetings this holiday week (at least it’s a holiday in the US!) with this morning’s publication of Barb & Terry’s essay “The Promise of Habit-Based Learning” in the journal Law & Liberty.  This essay turns the lens of neuroscience onto math education, showing how long-derided “rote” learning is actually extremely sophisticated, and  has an important place in education.  Here is the introduction to the piece:

“Education is a vital discipline, but something has gone awry. For example, over the past decades, the U.S. has dropped to the bottom of international rankings for developed countries in math. This decline has coincided with education reform, a shift that has emphasized understanding and downplayed practice. Could something that sounds so sensible have possibly been responsible for the drop?…

“The brain has two major learning systems. One is based on practice, and leads to fast, automatic behavior. This system is not accessible by conscious thought and is the source of intuition. The second system is based on deliberate thought—it is slow but flexible. You are consciously aware and can verbalize what you have learned. These two systems are roughly analogous to Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman’s “thinking, fast and slow.”

“Students need both fast and slow systems to learn well. Yet over the past fifty years, education, and math education in particular, has dismissed the importance of fast automaticity in learning—insisting instead that students can always look up whatever they need to know, and that drill equates to kill. But focusing primarily on slow, flexible thinking, appealing as it may be, is akin to asking a sprinter to run faster by hopping on only one leg.

“As management consultant Peter Drucker has noted: ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast.’ The culture of modern, Western approaches to teaching has long held that chasing after fluency kills student interest and creativity. Thus, although achieving fluency has now been written into current standards for teaching math, these standards are often minimized or ignored in actual practice by teachers.  After all, for close to fifty years, fluency, especially in math, has been de-emphasized and even ridiculed by educational leaders.”

There is more–much more, especially involving the support of neurally diverse students.  Read the whole thing!

The Gates Foundation turns its total educational focus to math education

Focus is definitely becoming more intense on the failures of mathematics education in the US. This article by Jay Caspian Kang in The New Yorker: “What Do We Really Know About Teaching Kids Math?” describes how the “field of math education is cluttered with bad and untested ideas. The Gates Foundation is spending more than a billion dollars to try to find a way forward.”  

Key graf: ““Math is unique because there is a right answer, and I think that politicizes it, somehow,” Hughes [the Gates Foundation’s director of K-12 education], said. “In other subjects, there may be different answers or you can have a multiplicity of interpretations. Math has a right answer; there are multiple ways to get there, but there is a right answer. We believe it’s important for kids to get to that right answer… This stands in opposition to much of the progressive push in math education…”

Birthdays & Thanksgiving

Every once in a while, Thanksgiving, which always falls on the third Thursday of November, happens to be on November 24th.  And indeed, on that day back in 1955, Barb’s mother spent all day cooking Thanksgiving dinner. She never got to eat it, though, because the cooking was the final straw that tipped her into the trip to the hospital. The result was Barb’s cheerful, if squealing, arrival into the world. So this Thursday is a special, true “double” birthday for Barb!  

And in a complete non-sequitur, enjoy seeing how the Vietnamese treasure learning with Barb’s segment on Vietnam Television Channel. 

Have a happy Thanksgiving week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

Altered Traits

Posted on November 2, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Almost Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Greetings from India!  If you happen to be in New Delhi, Barb has a meetup tonight (November 3rd) from 6:00 to 7:00 pm in the lobby of The Westin Gurgaon, New Delhi. Her deep dive webinar into retrieval practice for Indian learners on November 5th is here.

Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body by Daniel Goleman and  Richard J. Davidson.  Barb spent this past week teaching about the neuroscience of teaching and learning at the Tergar Monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal.  The Lead Abbot of the monastery is Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, perhaps the best-studied yogi in the world (here is a recent paper, co-authored by Davidson, summarizing the extraordinary differences in how Rinpoche’s brain as compared to the brains of typical controls).  Altered Traits gives a careful guide into what is known, and some of what is not known, about the neuroscience involved in various meditative processes. (For those wishing to dive deeper, here is a synthesizing article, behind a paywall except for the abstract, about the neuroscience of meditation.) 

There is some evidence that focused types of meditation, such as those that rely on bringing back attention that wanders, may suppress the activities of the default mode network–the brain’s states of relaxation. This suppression can reduce anxiety, which is great.  But there is perhaps a concomitant trade-off of reducing the mind-wandering that can sometimes be at the heart of creativity.  

During his discussions with Barb, as well as in his book The Joy of Living, (a very informative book on Buddhist meditative practices), Rinpoche emphasized that there are many other forms of meditation, besides focused mode, with many different neural effects.  It does seem, however, that many meditative practices begin with practice through focus, so it may good to be aware of potential tradeoffs in the type of meditative mind-training you may select. Meditation is indeed brain-changing!

 The Science of Learning: 5 Ways to Make Your L&D Strategy More Successful

In this unique new e-book, Coursera for business has partnered with Barb to offer five best practice tips that support L&D leaders in building high-impact, learner-centric L&D strategies. With this resource, you’ll learn how to:

  • Help employees master new skills
  • Help employees learn successfully
  • Cultivate employee curiosity
  • Help employees retain the material taught
  • Encourage employees to go beyond passive listening!

This webinar with Barb gives a good underlying sense of key ideas in the new e-book. And here is a not-to-be-missed blog post that includes a clip of discussion.

An app for social learning in Learning How to Learn

We will be experimenting with small study groups (squads of 2 – 5 people each) for students who are getting started with Learning How to Learn. Give it a try! Group learning can increase your motivation and chances of completing the course.

To connect with a squad, you will need to:

  • Download the “WeAreSix” app to your mobile device, available in the AppStore (iPhone) and in the Play Store (Android)
  • Once inside the app, enter the code for this course: goLHTL
  • And last but not least: Only join a squad if you are committed to sticking with it 🙂

Can we rewire our brains to become more fluent in math?

Mindmatters News contains a nice summary about how we can become more fluent with math—even when we think we’re not a “math” person. We love Fred Bech’s concluding words about the vital importance of good teachers: “A study by the Cambridge, Massachusetts–based National Bureau of Economic Research found that a student can learn as much as three times more from a very good teacher as opposed to a poor teacher. In fact, good teachers can provide as much as a $400,000 lifetime bonus to a student’s income. If the bottom five percent to eight percent of teachers were replaced with average teachers, the added benefit to the economy would be over $100 trillion dollars. The country would simultaneously vault to near the top of international science and math rankings.”

Turning Phone Time into Math Time—An Idea for Parents

Lydia El Khouri, who we mentioned last week in relation to an extended interview with Barb ( Part 1, and Part 2) writes with an interesting new approach she has taken in her house to help her children get away from excessive cell phone use:

“You really inspired me to change something in our house. Every morning my two children generally sat at the breakfast table reading their phones, it bothered me immensely and I wanted to turn it into a more constructive time. After our talk, I told them from 07.30-8am they were to do maths before they go to school when they are fresh and after a couple of days of complaining, they gave in and it is a thing in our house now thanks to you. So thank you so much, my husband and I feel so happy about this small change.”

So, inspired by Lydia’s example, “math time in the morning” might be an idea for your family if you have time before school in the morning!

Support for women 50+ with resources for reinvention

Our friend Hiroyo Saito, who does life coaching as well as coaching about teaching, has a website for women who are reinventing themselves to be their own best version.  Hiroyo focuses on mindsets, habits, and learning. Check out her writing at  hiroyosaito.com.

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

Help Solve a 21st Century Canine Medical Mystery

Posted on October 17, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Special Cheery Wednesday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Do You Love Animals? Help Solve a 21st-Century Canine Medical Mystery!

Today, Wednesday, October 19th, is giving day at the University of Wyoming, when matching funds will be available for a cause that is near and dear to Barb and her family’s heart: canine dysautonomia research. At the beginning of this year they lost their beloved Juniper “June Bug,” a 6-month-old rescue puppy to an awful disease that most have not heard of, but is increasing worldwide.

Canine dysautonomia, or CD, is a generally fatal disease of unknown cause found in certain parts of the Midwest and Western US states. It has also been found in the UK. The range appears to be spreading. The leading theory is that some unknown toxin in the soil, either bacterial or fungal in nature leads to degeneration of parts of the nervous system in some (particularly younger) dogs. Cases are often missed or not diagnosed until far into the disease course because initial symptoms are often vague and include severe vomiting and difficulty urinating/defecating. Classic symptoms that can aid in the diagnosis are protrusion of the third eyelid, dilated pupils, and decreased anal tone. Crusted nostrils and rapid weight loss are other symptoms that can occur. 

If caught early, there are some treatments that appear to be beneficial before aspiration pneumonia sets in, which is a frequent cause of death in this disease, including our triple P June Bug (Puppy Perfection Personified). 

Right now funds are desperately needed to help determine the cause of CD. If interested in donating on October 19th, when your donation can be boosted even further through matching please go to the following website:

Https://www.uwyo.edu/foundation/giving-day/matches-challenges/index.html

Then click on “Canine Dysautonomia Research.” The link will go live at 2:00  pm Eastern Time, October 19th (with matching for 24 hours!)

Donations can also be at any other time can be made by going to:

https://give.uwyo.edu/campaigns/24954/donations/new

and choosing: “Veterinary Sciences Canine Dysautonomia Research” as the “Giving Priorities.” Thank you from the bottom of our heart for any help you can give.  (We’ve given thousands of dollars.)

(Here’s a Canine Dysautonomia Facebook page if you also want to keep up on the latest research news.)

LearnTech Conference & Exhibition

Barb will be keynoting remotely at the LearnTech Conference & Exhibition, at 8:45 am Perth time, in Perth, Australia(natch!) on November 30th.  Barb’s presentation will be a special one that brings new insights to education from neuroscientific insights about how movies capture and hold our attention.  The awesome Dr. Steve Mackay, describing “Driving Awesome Outcomes with STEM in the Online World,” will be speaking right before Barb.

LearnTech will bring together leading thinkers and educators, and offer effective approaches to education for the modern economy. The event includes 10 expert speakers, an exhibition, product demonstrations and a panel discussion. More information can also be found on the LearnTech event page.

Retrieval practice—a perceptive review of an important paper

This excellent article by Megan Sumeracki of the Learning Scientists notes: “In the spirit of addressing true student learning and their ability to take what they have learned with them into new situations, today’s blog covers a paper by Robin Hopkins and colleagues (1). They asked whether spaced retrieval practice throughout a precalculus class would help engineering students learn precalculus and perform better on the precalculus course’ cumulative final exam, and whether spaced retrieval practice during precalculus would better prepare them for the following semester’s calculus class. 

Overall, what the results show is that yes, spaced retrieval practice during precalculus does lead to better performance in (1) precalculus and (2) on a cumulative final exam in the next semester’s calculus course many months later!

A great review of Mindshift

Here is a terrific view of Barb’s book Mindshift by the Nourished Executive. Key grafs: “This book is a gift and one to be returned to for continued inspiration. The continued theme of life long learning and making choices to invest in our learning, no matter what obstacles you are presented with continues throughout this book.

Mindshift takes us on a journey around the world with various case studies, highlighting ways a Mindshift was needed to propel forward, navigating great uncertainty. I really enjoyed how each chapter closes with questions and ideas to reflect on. There was a continued theme of the intersection of music with math and science.”

Lengthy Podcast for Parents with Lydia El Khouri and Barb

This extended interview (here’s Part 1, and here’s Part 2) contains some of the best questions Barb has ever been asked related to learning. Lydia El Khouri’s perceptive questioning brings out great insights related to learning that can be extraordinarily helpful for you as a parent.

The Fastest Way to Memorize ALL the BRITISH KINGS & QUEENS

Five-time US Memory Champion Nelson returns with a wonderful video where he teaches his wife how to easily memorize all the British Kings & Queens.  Hilarious!

Where in the World is Waldo Barb?

Barb will be speaking today (October 20th) in Bangkok, at The Backyard, 18th Fl. SCB Academy, SCB Park Plaza, East, with the event running 9:00 am through noon. 

She will  be in Kathmandu, Nepal October 26-November 2 (hosted by Tergar Oseling Monastery). Translation into Tibetan will also  be provided; contact Joseph.Faria@tergar.org. (Here is the livestream link at Tergar Oseling where we will be discussing learning, meditation, and neuroscience.)

Barb’s books are available at the Books Kinokuniya Tokyo–here she is with her Hero Husband Phil!

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

Running the Room

Posted on September 20, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Greetings from Dublin, Ireland! 

Book of the Month

Running the Room: The Teacher’s Guide to Behaviour, by Tom Bennett. This book is a masterpiece of specific advice about how to handle a classroom, written by a former nightclub manager turned teacher who has become one of the world’s leading experts on classroom management. It’s virtually impossible to summarize the many pithy insights of this extraordinary book, but this snippet gives a sense of the approach:

 “I once saw behaviour deteriorate from excellent to terrible in a matter of a few weeks. The school had a challenging demographic, but the behaviour was good because the senior staff led a team of motivated teachers in a rigorous way. Then along came a new head, whose first words to the students were, ‘I want you to see me as a friend,’ and ‘I will always give you another chance.’ Within a week, the most ambitious of students had tested his word and found that he would indeed permit anything as long as they thought he was a nice guy. Within a second week, the change in behaviour was palpable. A month later, with little support, teachers started to give up. The school went into a terminal nose spin. But it was OK: the school head moved on after a few years to another school, and no one was hurt apart from thousands of children who had their futures shredded by naivety, incompetence and the fairy tales we tell ourselves to feel good.”

Tom’s book, along with his company’s training, provides critical information that should be taught in every pedagogical program:

  • How to deal with students who are late
  • What are the best ways to work with parents?
  • Managing cover lessons successfully
  • How to tame smartphones
  • The best way to design a seating plan
  • How to start the lesson for the first time
  • Dealing with low-level disruption
  • Getting the class quiet when you – and they – need it most

Whatever your approach to teaching (or parenting), you will almost certainly benefit from this book. A bonus is that Tom is a funny, insightful writer—you’ll enjoy even as you are learning.

Barb’s ‘round the world travels (face-to-face unless otherwise noted) 

Barb will be in Europe and Asia speaking for a variety of private and public institutions over these next two months—take a look and see if she will be travelling or speaking near you!

  • September 24, Dublin, Ireland, opening keynote for the ResearchEd conference. (Sorry, this one’s already packed, with a waitlist to get in.)
  • September 27, Svalbard (Spitzbergen) Norway, Longyearbyen Skole (the world’s northernmost school); if you’re in Svalbard, Kirkenes, or Oslo, contact Barb at oakley@oakland.edu).
  • October 2, Kirkenes, Norway
  • October 3-8 Oslo
  • October 9-11 Amsterdam
  • October 15 Tokyo Books Kinokuniya Tokyo, Japan 
  • October 18-25 Bangkok (speaking on behalf of Siam Commercial Bank; for more information, please contact Nisha Nipasuwan, nisha.nipasuwan411@gmail.com)
  • October 19 Ministry of Finance Learning Week of the Republic of Indonesia (webinar); (for more information, contact Okto Sulaeman okto.sulaeman@kemenkeu.go.id of the Ministry of Finance).
  • October 26-November 2 Kathmandu, Nepal (hosted by Tergar Oseling Monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal. Translation into Tibetan will be provided; for more information please contact Joseph.Faria@tergar.org)
  • November 3-5 Delhi, India (speaking on behalf of Coursera, for more information contact Manisha Vasdev, mvasdev@coursera.org )
  • November 7 Singapore (extended workshop at NTU, for more information contact Dr Sally Siew Hiang Ng, sally.ngsh@ntu.edu.sg)
  • November 9 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (speaking on behalf of ETS Data Publishing and Coursera at leading Vietnamese universities and companies, for more information contact Albus D Hoang duc@edlabasia.org) 
  • November 11-14 Hanoi, Vietnam (speaking on behalf of ETS Data Publishing and Coursera at leading Vietnamese universities and companies, for more information contact Albus D Hoang duc@edlabasia.org) 
  • November 15 Mankassar University, Indonesia (webinar); (for more information, contact Sulfikar Sulfikar, sulfikar@unm.ac.id)
  • December 20, Defense Language Institute, Monterey, California (webinar); (for more information, contact Jon Phillips,  R FAC (CIV) jon.phillips@dliflc.edu)
  • In-person talks to come next spring at Karolinska Institutet and Dalarna University in Sweden and in universities in Finland (for more information, contact Ann Rudman ann.rudman@ki.se); Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (headlining again for the indomitable ResearchEd; for more information, contact Paul W Bennett, pbennett@ns.sympatico.ca); Reedley, California  for more information, contact Deb Borofka deb.borofka@reedleycollege.edu; and more!

Creating a Revolutionary Academic Program

Here is a terrific article by Umakishore Ramachandran and Zvi Galil about how the extraordinary low-cost, high value Georgia Tech Online Master’s in Computer Science (OMSCS) program was created relying on massive open online course (MOOC) technology. By relating their experiences—discussing the creative solutions they found as well as describing how they overcame challenges, Umakishore and Zvi hope to help colleagues and peers embarking on similar endeavors.

The 4 things it takes to be an expert

This is a wonderful analysis of what it takes to acquire expertise—and why so many experts perform in an unexpectedly poor way. This is one of the coolest videos we’ve seen on the vital importance of deliberate practice! [Hat tip, Adam Trybus.]

Better learning is today’s competitive advantage

This podcast interview with host Bill Ringle and Barb explores how the Pomodoro Technique can be used—and misused.  Enjoy!

A first blog post

Here’s a wonderful perspective by Elizabeth Templeman on Uncommon Sense Teaching, the book.  Key graf: “I should mention that learning about learning is central to my role, coordinating Supplemental Learning, and to guiding my amazing team of student leaders so that they can, in turn, guide hundreds of students, through their SL sessions, to learn more strategically and effectively. I only wish I’d known even a fraction of this when I was a student myself, many years ago, but it’s never too late to learn more about ourselves and how we perceive and process the world around us.

Next 3 years, I will be…

This is a wonderful blog post by an aspiring young man, Si Thu Khant, in Myanmar.   ‘…during the past few years, I’ve aimed to become a highly productive person. I created all the guidelines for an effective productive person and watched all the channels on YouTube that focused on productivity. I set up my daily life using all of the productivity applications. NONE OF IT WORKED FOR ME. I don’t know why, but I believe it is because my soul doesn’t desire the ordered things.” 

The world needs more such creative, independent thinkers. If you like Si Thu’s writing, feel free to reach out and let him know.  You could end up changing a life.

Lengthy Podcast for Parents with Lydia El Khouri and Barb

This extended interview contains some of the best questions Barb has ever been asked related to learning. Lydia El Khouri’s perceptive questioning brings out great insights related to learning that can be extraordinarily helpful for you as a parent.

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

Launch of the Uncommon Sense Teaching Specialization!

Posted on September 9, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Special Cheery Friday Greetings from Learning How to Learn!

If you’ve been wondering why our Cheery Friday emails have been a bit sparse lately, you need wonder no further!  This is a very special greetings. Today, we announce the launch of our final MOOC Teaching Online, which completes the full Uncommon Sense Teaching Specialization. Hurray!

We should start by saying that courses about teaching online are often just repurposed general teaching courses where you can spend weeks revisiting dusty, often outmoded theory.  Not in our specialization!  In our latest course, you’ll see how insights from movie-making, along with core ideas how to motivate unmotivated students, form the heart of Teaching Online.  Teaching Online gives you a fresh perspective with important teaching-related ideas that weren’t covered in MOOCs 1 & 2!  In Teaching Online, you’ll learn, for example, not only how students form expertise—but you’ll also see what is going on in students’ brains as they sync together during social learning. You’ll also see what happens as Barb is almost eaten by a giant frog; Georgia Tech’s online learning expert, Professor David Joyner, insidiously steals bowls (and occasionally, the show); and our very own dear Terry Sejnowski dons his wizard cap. 

I​f you’re an educational administrator or business executive, you’ll find Teaching Online is terrific not only for university and K-12 instructors, but for industry trainers. If you want your instructors to really understand the practicalities of online teaching, from microphones, cameras, facial expressions, capturing attention, videotaping tricks to make teaching easier, and ultimately, make the information stick better, this is that course.  If you’re a Chief Learning Officer at a major corporation, you’ll find this course to be invaluable in helping your corporate trainers to up their game.  We pack more practically useful, in-depth content in one course than many universities do in entire specializations (and we’re funnier, too!) But there’s more!

MOOC 1: Uncommon Sense Teaching is like no other course on teaching—it weaves late-breaking insights from neuroscience with personal insights from the classroom to provide unexpected, yet practical, new approaches.  You’ll discover how to bring out the best from all your students in today’s diverse teaching environment, where students often have a wide range of abilities. 

MOOC 2: Uncommon Sense Teaching, Part 2 will help you discover the hidden strengths of neurodiversity, and the value of forgetting. It will also help you discover hidden insights about critical thinking which, oddly enough, relate to our habitual thinking patterns! 

You can sign up for the entire specialization. (Yes, it’s that good!)  Or you can instead audit each MOOC for free by going to the individual MOOC and choosing the audit option at the bottom of the registration.  The animations and illustrations used in each MOOC are available for free under each video, even if you are just auditing. (Your patience is appreciated, though—please give us another week to finalize and upload the gifs for Teaching Online).

So here, after 1.5 years of devoted labor, is the Uncommon Sense Teaching Specialization and its three MOOCs—you can take either MOOC 0 or MOOC 1 first, and enjoy MOOC 2 after MOOC 1.  Enjoy!

Uncommon Sense Teaching Specialization

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

In Love with the World

Posted on August 19, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Hello from Abu Dhabi! Barb will be spending the week here keynoting and sharing during the professional development week at visionary—and swiftly climbing in the international rankings!—Khalifa University.

Book of the Month

In Love with the World: A Monk’s Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying, by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Helen Tworkov. We’re a bit meditation-heavy lately. But this is because in her upcoming trip to Nepal in October-November, Barb will be spending time at the Kathmandu Tergar Osel Ling Monastery. (Barb, Terry, and Beth’s book Uncommon Sense Teaching is used there as a textbook, thanks to its neuroscientific insight that also supports the monastery’s Buddhist perspectives.) In Love with the World is a fascinating book about the world of meditation because it centers around world-renowned Buddhist monk Mingyur Rinpoche’s near-death experience and the insights he gained from it.

Basically, Mingyur Rinpoche decided to do a “wandering retreat”—which meant going out into the real world instead of withdrawing into solitary meditation. In some sense, he sought to escape the patterns that had been locked in by his habitual, basal ganglia-based procedural system.  As he notes: “To break the mold of my conditioning, I had needed to do something a little extreme. In order to break through our conditioning and confront old habits, we might deliberately reverse a common pattern, at least for a limited time: If we habitually pick up a cup with our right hand, we commit to using our left hand; or we vow not to check our media devices more than once an hour; or for one week we promise never to exceed the speed limit when driving. I do not drive, but I have been told that this can be quite difficult. Anything that interferes with mindless repetition can function as a wake-up call, and an antidote to automatic, mindless behavior and habitual fixations. To encourage curiosity and flexibility, it’s important to discover our limits, and then stretch a bit further. In terms of lifestyle, a wandering retreat for me was a very big stretch, no doubt about it. But… That’s how I’d ended up on this train, all alone, in the middle of the night.”

Inside the Massive Effort to Change the Way Kids Are Taught to Read

This insightful article by Belinda Luscombe in Time describes why so many children—and adults—are unable to read.  

“As a teacher in Oakland, Calif., Kareem Weaver helped struggling fourth- and fifth-grade kids learn to read by using a very structured, phonics-based reading curriculum called Open Court. It worked for the students, but not so much for the teachers. ‘For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,’ recalls Weaver. ‘And we hated it.’

The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. ‘This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,’ says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. ‘So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.’ It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. ‘Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,’ he says.

“Now Weaver is heading up a campaign to get his old school district to reinstate many of the methods that teachers resisted so strongly: specifically, systematic and consistent instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics.”

TikToker or Filmmaker? Baron Ryan walks us through his TikTok process

This fascinating video walks us through TikTok star Baron Ryan’s creative process in making his videos.  There is much food for thought here for online teachers regarding the ease with which Baron creates his videos.

Inspiring Words from Yu Cao! 

Learning How to Learner Yu Cao writes: “I am a passionate learner. I have benefited tremendously from your course in Learning How to Learn. During my school year, when I worked to get my Ph.D., I applied various learning methods in your book. I now also teach my students the strategies I learned from you when I teach calculus. It is delightful to keep learning new things using the techniques!”

And here, incidentally, is a wonderful review of Learning How to Learn on Class Central, our go-to repository of reviews of the best MOOCs out there!

The “Diffuse Mode” and The New York Times’ Spelling Bee

Our dear friend Jenny Wolochow Sr. Product Manager at Coursera, notes how this article describes how to be a better solver of the Bee.”My last bit of advice is to come back to it. Give your brain a break, and you’ll see something you didn’t see before.” Yup—make use of that diffuse mode!

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

Waking Up

Posted on August 11, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, by Sam Harris.  This book is meant to be a common sense guide to finding spirituality without necessarily springboarding from a religious tradition. In Harris’s hands, we gain a clearer understanding of mindfulness. “It is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant.” (But for those LHTLers amongst us who are interested in such matters, it seems cultivating mindfulness translates to continuously maintaining focus and concomitAntly diminishing both anxiety and creativity, perhaps a mixed blessing.) 

As Harris notes: “The crucial point is that you can glimpse something about the nature of consciousness that will liberate you from suffering in the present. Even just recognizing the impermanence of your mental states—deeply, not merely as an idea—can transform your life.”

Harris has knocked around the world of meditation for many years—long enough to have a good feel for both the best and the worst of meditation experts and spiritual gurus.  You’ll find yourself thinking about Harris’s ideas  long after you finish the book.

OpenStax: A Best-Selling Textbook Is Now Free

As Liam Knox notes in Inside Higher Ed, award-winning and prolific author and professor emeritus John McMurry has recently decided to move his classic book Organic Chemistry from industry giant Cengage to OpenStax, a nonprofit based at Rice University that is dedicated to developing open education resources (OER), learning and research materials created and licensed to be free for the user.  “That means for the first time, the digital version of Organic Chemistry and its accompanying solutions manual — usually priced at almost $100 — will be available for students to download free.” OpenStax is growing wildly in popularity. “According to a recent survey by Bay View Analytics, faculty use of OER materials grew significantly over the past few years, especially during the pandemic. In 2015 only 5 percent of faculty said they used OER course materials; in 2022 that number had jumped to 22 percent.”

OpenStax Free College Textbooks and Related Flashcard Sets

Barb will present Teach You Students How to Learn in a webinar hosted by iDoRecall and OpenStax.org on August 17th at 1 PM EDT. Go ahead register, and you’ll receive a link to the recording so you can watch whenever it is convenient. Barb is the pro bono Chief learning Science Advisor of iDoRecall who has developed comprehensive sets of flashcards for most of OpenStax’s portfolio of Creative Commons high school and college textbooks. Everyone can access these flashcards for free. When you practice memory retrieval and struggle with the answer, you can click a link to open a PDF of the book at the precise, relevant location to refresh your memory.

Momentum builds behind a way to lower the cost of college: A degree in three years

This article by Jon Marcus in The Hechinger Report describes “A rare brand-new nonprofit university, NewU [with] a comparatively low $16,500-a-year price that’s locked in for a student’s entire education and majors with interchangeable requirements so students don’t fall behind if they switch.”  Part of the savings—and a big part of the draw—is that NewU offers bachelor’s degrees in three years instead of the customary four. Students are looking for a more efficient education, and a three year degree—much as what is offered in European universities—appears to be just the ticket.  As the article notes: “We didn’t think the three-year bachelor’s degree was going to be the biggest draw,” said Stratsi Kulinski, president of the startup college. “But it has been, hands-down. Consumers are definitely ready for something different.”

Barb Revisits Discussion of Pathological Altruism with the Atlas Society

Here’s Barb thinking she’s only on a podcast, so she’s especially frumpy when contrasted with the not only whip-smart, but also stylish President of the Atlas Society, Jennifer Anju Grossman. The Atlas Society is a benevolent group that tries to do good through rational, objective thinking. In this blundering (on Barb’s part) discussion, Barb manages to gratuitously diss objectivist heroine Ayn Rand even while praising some of her valuable ideas about pathologies of altruism. Here are the links to the webinar recording on YouTube and Facebook—take a look and listen and see what you think!

Zoom Party with Dr. Agarwal!

Join the Zoom Party from 5:00pm – 6:30pm EDT today (Friday, August 12) with Dr. Pooja Agarwal, co-author of one of our favorite books on teaching, Powerful Teaching.  These Zoom parties are a lot of fun—Barb went to one of Pooja’s previous ones this summer, and she plans to go again tonight.  See you there!

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

Flicker: Your Brain on Movies

Posted on July 22, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the Month

Flicker: Your Brain on Movies, by Jeffrey Zacks.  We have no idea how this magnificent book slipped under our radar when it was first published in 2014, but it’s a doozy!  Zacks is a renowned neuroscientist, but he also loves movies. The result let’s us peer into Zack’s life’s work, including an in-depth look inside movies to see what makes them work, and what makes us love them. 

Most followers of Learning How to Learn, as well as virtually all cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists are aware of working memory.  But few are aware of the importance of “event models”–the contents of working memory.  We believe the concept of event models, which Dr. Zacks helped pioneer, will become an important one in education, and particularly online education.  More about that to come in our upcoming MOOC 3 of Uncommon Sense Teaching! 

99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos: A Guide for Online Teachers and Flipped Classes, by Karen Costa. This simple, upbeat, encouraging book gives a nice boost for creating simple online videos for your classes that can be used over and over again (hence the “sustainable”) part of the title.  As Costa notes: “I’m here to shout from the rooftops that videos will make your life easier! Let me explain. How many e-mails or phone calls from students do you respond to each term asking you the same questions over and over? Tons, right? I teach first-year students, often in their very first online course. They have a lot of questions, and they need almost constant support. Being a great teacher is time-consuming. What if we could support our students and save ourselves time in the process?… This time is given back to me tenfold in the time that I save from answering countless and repetitive questions term after term. I have taught with and without these videos, and I can attest to the fact that in the terms in which I use videos, I receive far fewer frequently asked question-type queries from my students, and the quality of my students’ work is much better. That means I also spend less time working with students on revisions or resubmissions, because they are more likely to get it right the first time. While creating a video might cost you 15 minutes, it will pay you back in saved time.” 

If you’re looking for a quick-to-read motivator to get you going with simple videos, this is a good book to get you started.

Jump into the “Everest Memory Masterclass”!

5-TIME USA Memory Champion and Guinness Record Holder, Nelson Dellis’ amazing “Everest Memory Masterclass” is open for registration this week! You’ll learn all the things you need to have an amazing memory for life—you’ll learn how to apply memory techniques to suit all the important situations in your life where memory is essential. Barb herself is in one of the bonus interviews. Nelson is limiting the size of this cohort, so make sure to check it out and sign up! Signup here.

Barb on Fast and Slow Learners 

Check out Barb’s podcast discussion of fast and slow learners with Mike Bergin, the President of Chariot Learning and Founder of TestBright, and Amy Seeley, President of Seeley Test Pros. This is a hot topic in learning, so you’ll be interested to hear the latest!

A review of good flashcard apps

Here is a nice article by Ransom Patterson of College InfoGeek of five top flashcard apps, along with discussion of the pluses and minuses of each.  At a time when learners are increasingly realizing the value of retrieval practice, this is a helpful article indeed.

Long-term effects of using the MOOC ‘Learning how to learn’ to teach learning techniques

This intriguing study provided insight into the long-term effects of using the MOOC Learning How to Learn to teach learning techniques on students’ foreign language learning behavior over a two year period.  The upshot?  As author Beate Luo concludes: “Time spent on Learning How to Learn was time well spent.”

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team