Keys to Effective Learning

Keys to Effective Learning

Academic Succes

Whether we are at school, college, university or working hard to climb the career ladder, I’m sure that we all understand the importance that continuous and ongoing learning plays in our continued success throughout life. This IQ Matrix presents you with some fundamental Keys to Effective Learning. Based on the principles discussed within the Memletics [...]

Introduction

Whether we are at school, college, university or working hard to climb the career ladder, I’m sure that we all understand the importance that continuous and ongoing learning plays in our continued success throughout life.  This IQ Matrix presents you with some fundamental Keys to Effective Learning. Based on the principles discussed within the Memletics Accelerated Learning Manual, this Mind Map will hopefully provide you with a good foundation on the basic principles behind this powerful learning method.
Visit the Memletics.com website to learn more about the Memletics Accelerated Learning System.

Learning is as much about technique as it is about developing an empowering and lasting physiological and psychological state. You may well have all the techniques and learning methods thoroughly entrenched into your habitual patterns of behavior, however, if you lack the energy or can’t bring forth the required mental effort and awareness, than your progress will undoubtedly suffer as a result. Here are some suggestions to assist you in developing an empowering state that will provide you with the energy you need to excel:

Healthy Cells

Your biology is made up of billions of cells that work cooperatively to keep you healthy and at peak condition. However, through incorrect dietary habits, we drain our cells of the energy they need to promote peak states of learning on a consistent basis. In order to bring back that “ZING” into your cellular biology you need to consume plenty of water, glucose, oxygen (through deep breathing exercises) and get the essential nutrients you need such as amino and fatty acids that will keep your cells at peak conditioning.

Healthy Physiology

Even though learning is mostly a very sedentary activity, it is however very dependent and reliant on one’s physiological health and wellbeing. By partaking in physical exercise, by eating energy rich foods (fruits and vegetables) and through periods of deep relaxation, you will dramatically enhance your learning ability and maximize your potential.
Furthermore, it is easy to take our learning environment for granted and its influence on our physical wellbeing. Make sure that your learning environment is supportive to your learning needs and that it provides you with adequate fresh air, lighting and skeletal support. Finally, it is important to understand one’s sleeping patterns and energy cycles that we tend to move through throughout our day. Make sure you plan your learning accordingly with these peaks and valleys in your cycles to achieve accelerated learning states.

Healthy Psychology

Psychology is all about strengthening your mind in ways that will enhance and accelerate your learning potential. This can be achieved in several ways. First, start off by setting empowering learning goals that will propel you forward despite the challenges that you may face.
Secondly, adopt a positive mental attitude that will help you to focus on solutions over problems.

Thirdly, just as you would exercise daily in order to keep your body fit, it is also important to develop the ability to stay mentally alert and centered throughout your day. This requires brain gymnastics and fitness. By this I mean to challenge your brain with finding solutions to problems, with creative thinking, with memorizing numbers and phrases, and generally with anything that will stimulate it in ways that will take it out of the doldrums of its comfort zone.
Take a look at the brain training software available for the Nintendo DS for further information. And finally, just like your body, your brain also requires periods of relaxation and recuperation on a daily basis. Here are some more online resources for Brain Training.

The Learning Process

There are some simple steps and guidelines that one can follow to assist in structuring, organizing and managing the entire learning process. Although please keep in mind that the methods outlined here present one of a number of ways that this process can be undertaken. A future Mind Map will focus on Study Skills which will provide you with a slightly different perspective on this approach. However for now, here are some suggestions that can assist you with enhancing the learning process:

Locate

Your first step is always to locate and identify the learning materials (books, articles, websites, etc) that you will need for content extraction. In order to be both effective and efficient throughout your learning process, make sure to have all your study materials prepared before moving onto the next step.

Explore

Exploration of your resources and topic content is the next step within the learning process. This exploration of your content material should be accomplished through the use of 7 intelligences; namely:

• Visual (diagrams, graphs, sketches, mind maps),
• Aural (focus on and record sound),
• Verbal (lectures, discussions, dramatic reading, creating recordings),
• Physical (incorporating movement, role playing, post-it-notes),
• Logical (analysis, playing with numbers),
• Social (group learning, role playing, involving others)
• Solitary (personal journal, reaction notes, etc).

These will be discussed in a little further detail at a later time. For now, it is important to move through the exploration phase in a way that enhances your immediate understanding of this material, and this is best achieved through the use of the above mentioned learning methods.
As a general rule, the more of these methods you utilize throughout the learning process, the more readily and easily you will absorb the material you are studying. For more information, please read Advanced Multi-Sensory Study Skills IQ Matrix.

Arrange

Here you are basically preparing your content for the process of memorization. Firstly, analyze the content to get a feel for the type of material you are dealing with. Secondly, select the techniques you will utilize that will be most effective in assisting you with the long-term retention of the materials. Finally, you must now prepare the content in a way that will support the learning methods you have chosen.

Reinforce

This is the point where you take everything you have done in the previous steps and begin converting this information into longterm memory. This is accomplished through applying the 7 intelligence principles, through varied and creative repetition, and through conducting regular reviews of your material throughout the learning process.

Enquire

This process involves the act of measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of your learning. This can be measured in 4 ways.
Firstly, through Immediate Reviews where you take in feedback on a continuous basis throughout the learning process.
Secondly, through Lesson Reviews where you review the effectiveness of the previous steps when learning new material.
Thirdly, you can apply Formal Reviews where you utilize tests and other grading methods to test your knowledge of these principles.
And finally, conduct a System Review by over-viewing the entire learning process and looking at ways it can be managed more effectively and improved in the future.