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 Learning Strategies

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Learning strategies fall under the scope of 4 high level pillars.  The four essential pillars are communication, interpersonal skills, decision making and lifelong learning.

Communication skills:

- Observation allows us to interact with the media around us.  We need to develop excellent observation skills in order to interface effectively.

- writing allows us to express ourselves.  As children other forms of expression can be utilized such as through art and music.  But the magnitude of our learning quickly explodes into more complex forms that make such art methods inadequate to capture the ideas.

- Active listening allows us to concentrate on what it is we are learning.  This is especially crucial in a classroom setting where wandering off – even for a few minutes – can lead us to fall behind in the educational content

- speaking effectively allows us to interact with others in a learning environment.  When we speak we offer others the ability to answer our questions or correct our misconceptions – both critical in the path to learning.

- developing rapport with others is a skill set that is often overlooked.  The word rapport doesn’t only refer to “speaking” but can include methods such as body language.  When we develop good rapport with people we essentially improve our learning abilities.  For instance we may develop rapport with a mentor – someone who would normally be too busy to help us.  A mentor can help provide a more direct route to learning and help us avoid pitfalls and traps

- effective reading belongs to the class of life skills that help us interface with the media we are trying to learn.  Reading too slow can have deleterious effects. So can learning too fast but with poor comprehension.  Please refer to the article on speed reading – in this website to help with your overall reading effectiveness.

decision making skills:

- math skills are a component necessary for us to make decisions.  Math is used in every faction of life from medicine to engineering to flipping burgers at McDonalds (you have to time the cooking, provide change, etc)  Taking the time to learn essential math skills will go a long way in helping you learn.

- solving problems is a skill that is developed.  Yes this is something that is learned!  If you plan on taking some of the college entrance exams offered (like the GRE, MCAT, etc) you would do yourself a disservice if you didn’t pick up a practice exams.  Even problems related to logic (especially problems related to logic) are things that require a structure plan of attack.

- decision making is essential learning strategy that focuses on our brains ability to sort the learning material into useful and non-useful categories.  Deciding what material is crucial while deciding on what not to focus on can impact the success of our learning.

- planning is necessary before learning anything.  You wouldn’t take a trip across the country without planning.  Plans help provide an overall picture and help you determine the resources (mainly time resource) you will need to effectively learn the material.  It can also help prioritize the essential components that should be learned from the ones that are good to know.

Interpersonal skills:

- leading others offers a person or an organization with the means to collectively collaborate in the learning effort.  A sales team for instance can have direction by a group leader in scoping out a particular market.  A marketing team can be lead into determine the best effective props to use at an upcoming tradeshow, etc.

- conflict resolution skills is a learning strategy that takes the emotion out of learning.  Learning is best done without the burden of having to get angry with others.

- learning to follow orders including direction as to what is necessary to learn (by a group leader or teacher) is necessary.  Even if we don’t believe that learning a particular thing or skill is all that useful, the person in charge is acting on behalf of the company and your participation to learn something is crucial in the organizations overall vision for the company.

- effective interaction with others as was touch upon earlier in this article is key to learning.  We may be the greatest minds since Einstein, but if we can’t interact with others we are missing the opportunity to learn from mentors or even from other’s mistakes.

Lifelong Learning Skills:

- Evaluation of the problem: problems are the basis for all learning.  Learning helps us answer not only the problems we tackle but also from similar problems.  For instance, we learn that ovens are hot (obvious to us now but not to a young child).  The problem is if we touch the over we will get burned, etc.  Now a different set of circumstances come about; the cookie tray comes out of the oven, we deduce that the cookie tray must also be hot.  This is obviously an over simplification of how evaluating problems help us in the evaluation or learning of other similar problems.

- Researching will be a lifelong skill that must be utilized on an ongoing basis.  You couldn’t learn anything without researching.  Even going to a local field to study the flora; the mere aspect of your presence is research.

- Take ownership for learning:  Learning becomes easy when it becomes fun and congruent with what we really want.  Learning anything is a chore if we keep asking ourselves “why do I have to learn this crap!”  That sort of attitude will already set you back – even before you pick up your first book.

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