Learner Reviews & Feedback for Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects by McMaster University

I loved it from the beginning till the end! It was perfectly structured (easily "chunkable":)), each video was really exciting and very easy to understand! I can only regret that I did not learn all of this back when I was studying at high school and the university. I'm sure I would have had more confidence and would have learned more deeply both several of the advanced mathematics subjects during my computer science studies at the university as well as in various other subjects earlier at school.

Among all of the great ideas presented in the course I would like to highlight the idea that you have just four or so short term memory slots available to your focused thinking as something that I think would be very motivating for anyone not to give up complex subjects. In case you don't understand something all you have to do is grow chunks of the concepts (i.e. grow some neuron connections) involved using the focused and diffuse mode and give them some time to form.

I have to get it translated to Latvian and popularize it here somehow. I think that could be one of the most efficient ways how to both increase the number of people who study the sciences as well as raise the average level of education at least a bit.

This course has opened my eyes to learning and provided me with a solid foundation to rebuild my own learning methods and strategies. I have gained tremendous insight about various forces at play that need to work like a well orchestrated symphony if I am to tackle complex subjects and master learning.

The course is structured very well with short video lectures and sprinkled with quizzes to help you retain invaluable information. Also, there is opportunity for supplemental work to further cement one's newly discovered strengths. The optional reading sections and interviews with various people has further augmented my understanding and sparked ideas for novel applications of learning.

By applying the techniques, I have already started to retain and recall more information than I have ever done before. I have also stopped wasting my time by re-reading material endlessly or writing things down. Instead after learning something new, I pause after each key idea and test myself if I can recall the gist of it and see how it fits with the rest of knowledge mass. This technique alone has unlocked my potential.

I highly recommend this course to anybody. I am super excited for finding something that actually works.

Quick review. Course is a must for any discipline!

Longer Review.

As an Electrical Engineering student. We are trained in first year to learn properly. Quickly read the lecture beforehand, ask questions, do the practice tutorials the day before, read over the notes you made during the say, get enough sleep and so on. Many of the things taught in the course I already knew, but the major difference is why we should be doing such things. You just should. However, now being shown why such things work and how everything relates to others has fundamentally changed my approach in learning my degree. Actively knowing that putting in effort in certain techniques taught here will improve the learning of the degree; and seeing the difference already in my grades and mood wasn't something I was expecting. The best part was of talking procrastination, where I knew of the pormodoro technique but it never worked due to not being able to spot the cues of procrastination. By simply saying that's cue, back to work. I can pull 8 hour days and complete all my assignments without feeling like I've killed myself .

If anything I can contribute my degree to is this. No longer am I just passing, I'm actually doing well.

Thank you

All the study tips I should've used in school and more! I felt this course was an easy way to get into the world of online courses. I had read a couple chapters of the Learning How to Learn book first, got stuck, and decided to try the course. The material is presented in quick snippets, but as I learned how my brain worked, I found myself finishing multiple videos and even clicking a couple bonus materials.Week 2's interview with Dr. Fortenberry emphasized teamwork and taking an objective oriented approach to road bumps in a learning journey.Week 3's interview Keith Devlin emphasized taking a focused approach to your work/passion and that it's ok if you don't know the solution off hand. Using the tools you do have and applying mental brute force might be your only option to start. If you don't start you'll never complete the journey that's associated with a problem!Even though I am out of school now, the course provided relevant insight to how my brain works and treating learning like building the structure of your dreams. There are snippets on how you can get past your own mental hurdles holding you back from accomplishing you goals and how you can reduce the anxiety and pressure while you get there.

One of the most useful courses I took! Each of the modules provides unique tips to overcome difficulties in learning, such as procrastination, taking exams and revision, etc. I found that the short videos provided by Dr Oakley are very convincing! You can read more as a reference list is provided at the end of the video as well. The coverage of the material is also broad, I think everybody can try to practice these techniques mentioned when they are studying as well.

I also appreciate the optional content embedded in the course as well. They include interviews (one from professor Keith Devlin, the instructor of “Introduction to Mathematical Thinking” as well!), and 2 further writing peer-reviewed assignment. I think these contents are what made the course so good, it provides you with a chance to produce a project (a poster, a presentation, or even a song!) to showcase and summarize what you had learnt during the 4-week course. During the production of the project, I feel like the values taught in the class is more thoroughly embedded in my mind.

Overall, I highly recommend this course to people who struggle at learning sometimes (just like me), I am sure you will learn a lot by watching the videos!

Superb. This is the first MOOC I managed to finish, and now I'm actively exploring all the extra resources and videos from the course.

I originally enrolled looking for tips on how to make my courses more accessible for my students (I'm a college instructor), and also to help me hone my learning skills, since I'm starting to delve on different fields of study. Not only did I achieve those goals, but I'm also very excited to explore new MOOCs and online study possibilities.

The only downside, if one could say such, is that this course sets quite a high bar in how a MOOC should be: one can easily percieve that everything about its format -- from the weekly newsletter to the videos' length and visuals to the structure and syllabus -- is made with careful consideration of the context of online learning, and of the fundamentals of neuroscience the course shares with the students. Many (good!) MOOCs aren't as well tailored as this one.

I absolutely recommend it to anyone who is interested (even if frustrated!) with learning, be it independently, online or in a traditional classroom environment. Congratulations and warm thank yous to Dr. Oakley, Dr. Sejnowski, and the Learning How to Learn Team!

This course is 4 weeks long; Why Do something new for30 days; do this course.

If you've always wanted t be a much better learner , then nows the time: think about it, you've always wanted to add to your learnings in life , advent you? Invest in Meta learning - Learning about learning - for the next 30 days.

30 days is a great time span, it's just about the right amount of time to add this new habit , Learning how to learn, to your life.

Get a hold of the coming month, (theres a course starting right now on 22 march2016), and you can find instead of t 2016 flying by, forgotten, the time invested in March/ April will make everything in 2016 and beyond much more memorable. Your self-confidence as a Learner par excellence will grow exponentially.!

if you really want to be a superlative learner badly enough, you can certainly do this course with dedication & commitment for 30 days.When you make small, sustainable changes, things you keep doing, they are more likely to stick.

So here's my question to you: What are you waiting for? the next 30 days are going to pass anyhow, so why not Choose To be A Skilful Learner, something you have always wanted to do and give it a shot!

I think this is one of the best courses I have attended. I wish concepts taught in this class are taught to every student right from the early age. I am 39 years old and as I look for a job (I was laid off a while back), I feel educating myself by getting certifications would be a good idea to enhance my prospects of exposing myself to better opportunities and with this course I have the self confidence that yes I can learn and get good grades in my certifications.

I was getting bogged down by procrastination to a very large extent in my life and this course helped me deal with the procrastination zombies using pomodoro, this feels so empowering and I am glad I did not choose depression or bad habits. After incorporating the pomodoro technique I have also significantly reduced my 10+ year smoking habit and I am confident I will get rid of it like a champ.

Listening to professors from such esteemed colleges and universities help break the dogma/belief in my head that people are born genius. With hard work, dedication and self-belief anything is possible.

Lastly, I want to thank Barbara Oakley and Terry Sejnowski from the bottom of my heart, Thank you for teaching me about learning.

After signing up for at least half a dozen (probably ~10) MOOCs over the past few years, this is the first course that I have actually followed to completion. Not only is the information relevant to my daily (non-student) life, but it is presented in an engaging and *cough* memorable way. I doubt I will be forgetting about my mental zombies or metabolic vampires anytime soon.

The two most life changing, and I mean that literally, ideas shared in this course were the Pomodoro technique and focusing on "process", not "product". Using these two new methods/ideas I have made significant progress on projects I have been putting off for quite a while.

All of the topics covered were engaging and informative, not to mention useful!

For those who are hesitant to try this course due to lack of free time, I would recommend turning up the video speeds by 25% increments, until you are at a comfortable speed where you still understand the material, but compress your time spent watching the videos. I started at 1.25x, slowly working my way up to the max of 2x by the end of the course.

This is an excellent course covering a critical topic that can improve your daily life, for the rest of your life!

I took this course as part of a programming curriculum, and I was absolutely hesitant to go through so much content. However, I have absolutely no regrets! Be ready to learn a lot about learning, as ironic as that sounds! You will learn some basic science behind the mind and how we learn, and then will be exposed to a lot of different methods you can use to learn whatever you need. The content creators are qualified due to their educational backgrounds and often times mention the studies that support their techniques. I truly believe that everybody would benefit from taking this course no matter where they are in life. The first week of content absolutely blew me away, and made me realize that I was experiencing a lot of what was covered! I thought I didn't need this as I have been through K-12 and some college, but it definitely gave me a reality check. I will admit that I was completely discouraged when I saw that estimated time completion. But I highly recommend setting your video speed to x2! I have tons of notes on my note editing software to accompany everything I've learned, and I will absolutely use what I've learned here for the rest of my life!

This course is helping me solve one of the most pressing problems I am facing as a student which is how to learn on my own in online courses. After searching books, talking with people, and searching the internet, I found this course. While I was aware of some of the material this course offered which aiding in my chunking of the material in this course, the mental techniques which I was not aware of have been very helpful such as chunking in small burst with the Pomodoro Technique and learning multiple subjects in parallel rather than one at a time thus utilizing interleaving, focusing on deepening my understanding of materials I already know a bit about in the form of overlearning, figuring out ways to win against pitfalls in misunderstandings because of prior knowledge or Einstellung, and working against procrastination plus more.

This is a great course that many people can benefit from and I am very grateful for the opportunity to have learned from Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski. As a computer science undergraduate in college, these mental tools are very useful and students of other fields can benefit as well, from humanities to business and beyond.

Learning how to learn is a real thing that complete changed my life and attitude towards many things. It was mentioned that when we are born, our brain is not supplemented by the manual guide. I think this course can be a real manual guide for many of those who have taken this course. It explain the nature of our brain. When we ask plain questions such as why we should go to bed early or why we have to learn every day and shouldn't cram, sometimes we get very vague answers which cannot meet our expectations. After this course, I could totally understand the nature of my brain and my behavior. I could change my patterns and get rid of many bad habits. I am sure that this course could boost me even more. Also after this course I decided to learn Chinese. I have never thought about it, but having been inspired by Barbara Oakley I could make this very unexpected for me choice. Also I have notices that my memory skills somehow became better. I will highly recommend this course to my friends, students and many other curious people.

I would like to thank the University of California, San Diego. and Barbara Oakley for this wonderful course.

Best regards,

Andrew Liberman

I have time and often started online courses and left them midway. This one, I completed within a week. The course was terrific in terms of high-value content as well as its lucidity. It provides clear, no-nonsense takeaways, which you can apply in everyday life to learn a new skill. It directly addresses the common fears everyone faces and gives you tools on how to address those fears.Some very high-level takeaways are as follows: Exercise helps you learn better, Switch between focussed and diffused (relaxed, leisurely mood) to maximize your learning potential, getting a good night's sleep is very important, deal with procrastination right-away, don't get disheartened if you don't learn something in the first go...get away, try to recall and get back to it., don't keep hammering at something which is frustrating...get back to it later, repetition is key to acquiring new skills and getting better at it, but do repetition regularly over several days and months, testing frequently your new skills is key to acquire those skills, skipping back and forth might be a good idea to solve a bigger problem consisting of many smaller problems, and many more tips and ideas.

This is a wonderful class. The entire team at Learning How to Learn have put together a marvelous course which teaches us how to learn. What I found very helpful was learning that there are things you can do to achieve competence. Becoming a skilled learner is not magic or genetics or esoteric techniques but rather very basic things: putting in time and making it a part of daily living like eating or sleeping, practicing over time and not cramming everything into one day, making the study period consist of varied methods and material, doing self tests, challenging your self by doing hard things to deepen understanding of a topic, recalling material by closing the source or book and trying to make a brief summary statement, using mnemonic methods, analogies, metaphors, visualizations to really help you remember. The most important take-away from this class is that learning requires me to do certain things. If i commit to doing these things, then i can learn anything. Doing a little every day and keeping at it will help you to gain mastery in whatever you wish to learn. Thank you so very much for empowering manny many people by sharing these methods.

This is the first class I had ever taken on the open online classes. I took it to be prepared to take other classes. Honestly, I figured it would be kind of like a reminder class on studying. The Professors are amazing. The have set a high standard for other classes. There was never a dull moment. It was so much fun and I learned so much NEW information but Not only did I learn it but I completely understand why it works. it is great having insight into the brain and how to have it work for you. This is not the standard study skill class at all. The names says it all. I still surprise myself on how enthusiastic I am when I get the opportunity to use the information acquired . It really works . it's like being able to depend on a really good friend. They are always there to help you pull through and won't leave you hanging. My favorite is the Pomodoro technique. if you procrastinate this is the one to help you get stuff done. I have incorporated a lot of what I learned into my daily life. After being in many other classes, I have to say this is the BEST class I have taken. It's the knowledge I use most. Keep up the good work Barb and Terry!!!

Wow, I definitely learned a lot of new things about how important it is to take our brain and the way we think and process things into our consideration with our learning. It is super significant to incorporate the right techniques into learning things and understanding things or you might not learn that much at all. ANd retaining information and actually being able to recall it yourself and test yourself on it and do these other things to really know and be confident in what you're learning is also a good thing to do. This course has so many beneficial tips and the advice that they provide definitely confirms a lot of the things that I thought might be right before on instinct but didn't really know for sure and now that I have the knowledge to use all these approaches to learning properly, I feel like I can truly ace all of my classes, maximize my productivity, and hopefully use the extent of my capabilities. Or at least more of them. Highly recommend taking this 5/5 stars just really simple and straight forward stuff that will help save a lot of time and provide a lot of useful brain shortcuts that you were never taught in school.

💯🎯

I loved this course - the subject-matter was interesting, the instructor was endearing, and the content was incredibly easy-to-grasp, fun and engaging. The retrieval quizzes were well spaced out and super helpful for embedding the new knowledge, and the expert interviews were great as well.

Two potential improvement areas: 1.) The videos featuring Barbara Oakley (which was most of them) are very low-volume. I had turned up my device speakers and the video player volume adjustor to the maximum levels (and tried on multiple devices) but it was really hard to hear some of them without straining, and having to download the transcripts in order to follow along (which meant missed some of her hilarious visuals). No audio issues with the other videos or in my other Coursera classes. 2.) The practice quizzes allow you to see WHAT you got wrong in a given problem (and indicated what the correct choice would have been), and explained WHY it was wrong, but the actual quizzes don't reveal either. This made me feel anxious every time I got a question I'd gotten wrong on a previous quiz, since I didn't know what exactly I'd gotten wrong or why.

I wanted to hold off on reviewing this course immediately after completing because learning is something that can only be demonstrated over a long period of time. I feel that it would be dishonest for anyone to review this kind of course which stresses the importance of spaced learning and long-term memory/chunking the moment it's finished.

After closely practicing the methods and techniques (emphasis on spaced learning method and recall technique) throughout the course and finishing the Final exam of this course, I wrote down all the important terms, concepts, and techniques with each of their respective definitions on Quizlet.

I put this whole Learning How to Learn course into the back of my mind for a month. No active reviewing of any of this material.

A month goes and I check my to-do list and it says "Do Quizlet's auto-generated tests which uses your key terms and definitions that you wrote down. No reviewing for this test."

I got a 100% on this informal test after not having done any review of Learning How To Learn's material after a month. I am confident in saying that if you properly execute this course's concepts, it will work.

good afternoon, starting from this course, I thought that it would be a banal cramming of the material (I studied this way sometime 23 years ago), so even in project work for students I recalled this with the phrase: we all learned something sometime and somehow . But this August-September there was a radical change in the idea of ​​learning.

the idea that a lot depends on yourself, the simplicity and availability of explanations of teachers, interest in the topic throughout the course, the application is real !!! Techniques and Tips from Barbara Oakley Terrence Sejnowski Teachers - These Tips Help It Truthfully, Practically And Easily For The Student To Understand

So I don't want to part I'll watch the video materials again and save more recommended materials for independent study

I am grateful for this course because it gave me more confidence in myself and my abilities

many thanks to the translators who made it possible for students without knowledge of English to listen to and read this course - we learn how to learn

I am grateful to the guests giving interviews and practical !! applicable guidelines

THANKS going further👩🏻‍🎓

Como una persona bilingüe y un hombre de 29 años que jamas creyo que podria ser buen estudiante recomiendo muchisimo este curso, no solo me ha apoyado en las areas academicas de mi vida si no tambien en mi vida personal, ahora uso el metodo Pomodoro hasta para limpiar mi habitacion, estoy eternamente agradecido con los doctores Baraba Oakley y Terry Sejnowski que se tomaron el tiempo de hacer este curso, de verdad lo disfrute muchisimo y aprendi mucho mas de como aprender, sin duda algo que planeo aplicar para generaciones futuras.

As an bilingual person and a 29 year old man who never believed he could be an A+ student I recommend a lot this course, not only because it has helped me on the academic aspect of my life but also in my personal life, i even use the Pomodoro Technique to clean my room, I am forever grateful with the Doctors Barbara Oakley and Terry sejnowsky for taking the time to do this course, I really enjoyed it a lot and i learned much more about "How To Learn", without a dobut is something that I plan to teach to future generations.

Thanks a lot Barbara Oakley and Terry Sejnowski....and Happy Learning everyone!

I had been facing the lack of commitment and strong procrastination for a long time when it come to online learning. I have enrolled and unrolled many courses for years and never had one completed. 4 weeks ago, all of this changed. I logged into my Coursera account again after one year to try for another start and to keep myself learning during this COVID-19 and viola, I saw that I have enrolled in "Learning how to learn" a year ago. It's just a perfect timing. When you are having difficulty keeping your learning going and been giving all the excuses, this is the best course to start and I am happy to say, for the first time in like years since I am on Coursera, this is my first course that I completed and currently I am on another course and is half way through. Pomodoro has been my daily tools for both work and study. 7 to 8 hours sleep and exercise are my priority. To do list before going to bed keep my self motivated waking up next day knowing what I needed to get done. There's so many great tips and I feel like I can do more! Thank you for this amazing course! I can now say with more confident that I am a learner :)

Ramesh completed this course, spending 3 hours a week on it.

There are lots of opinions on how to learn, which from this course it has provided me with research-based outputs that somehow or the other gave me a new understanding of learning approaches and techniques.

Some parts are actually within my knowledge and practice, such as metaphors and analogies + visually.

The teamwork seems to be providing a great reflection material. As I found that sometimes I am uneasy to perform all the time teamwork as there are times where my opinions are rejected due to my less influential behavior. And, having a community that looks high on opinions, the influential skills are considered as a leadership norm in teamwork. However, spotting errors and noticing it from other team members are really useful. For example, when we are developing software which requires counter checking our codes. That is why we are now practising Pair Programming, even many similar communities do.

Great course. I will need to train to have a good "holistic" right-brain from now on.

BRAVO to Dr Barb and Dr Terry.

Thanks

Sincerely

Ramesh Zaidi Rozan

Amazing course. Concepts and ideas are explained very clearly and thoroughly, and all study techniques taught in this course are based on scientific facts and research. Furthermore, option videos show us fantastic examples of people who succeded at learning, and they are all very inspiring. I don't think I can explain how much the ideas taught in this course touched me deeply. For years I've been thinking that it was pointless for me to study properly because my memory is not that great and I would forget things in a matter of weeks. Well, Barbara & co. made me realize that the development of my memory and my brain is in my hands (and not only in my genes) and I can actively work in order to improve them. Now, I won't probably get a PhD in Engineering, but I feel that -with the right motivation and study techniques- I can really achieve almost everything I want. It's really a great feeling. Thank you so much for this course. Highly recommended to everyone, but especially to those who feel insecure about their study methods and academic achievements. I wish someone taught me all of this when I was actually a student!

This course is potentially useful to anyone at any age from any background. There are useful tools in this subject matter that can help most any learner learn any subject more easily whether in an academic environment or a non-academic environment. This course is more than a self-help course because the course lays a foundation as to how to learn any subject matter. Because this course is contemporaneously based in scholarly and scientific research, social science, and especially brain science, the learner is benefiting from some of the most recent and sound knowledge available without pedantic complexity. This course takes some very complex knowledge and makes that data easily accessible to most learners such that the learners may become self-actualized. This course can be truly transformative in nature because this course will change a learner's perspective about how to learn anything and change a learner's perspective about one's self. This course is not snake oil. I know because this course has changed how I learn and changed me as a person. In short, this course has positively changed my life.

It's strange that I didn't know about the information in this course before. It makes learning fun and easier than what I used to. It's not about math or science, it's about everything you learn in live.

I recommend this course to everyone who want a better learning approach. This course is a good start to know about learning.

a Quick summery for the course:

1- It's important to know you need to study and rest. It's like exercising, You need to work, but you need to rest to let your body build the muscles.

2- You need to get the big idea of what you are learning before diving into deep details. It makes getting the idea easier.

3- Procrastination is a tough problem for learners, but you will be shocked of how easy it's to tackle it.

4- It's important to know how the brain works

5- some people are talented. others need to work harder, but that doesn't mean they are worse. If they worked harder, they will show you their true potential. Example: People with ADHD, They have to work harder to grasp the information, but once they understand it, they will be creative with it.

I wish my review was helpful.