Being able to learn is clearly a really important skill to have as a student. Very often when you are a student, you are taught all sorts of things around all kinds of topics, but not very much about the actual process of learning itself. But the more you know about how learning works, the more effectively you can learn everything else, so this is the kind of thing that can clearly help with students of all subjects.
In this post, we’ll take you through some ideas around how you might be able to improve your capacity for learning and your ability to learn. If you bear some of the following in mind, it’s likely that learning is going to become easier and that you will be able to improve your experience and get better grades. Let’s take a look at what may be involved.
Go Above Memorizing
Although there is a time and a place for memorization, very often this is not actually the most important or the best approach to learning, and that is something that you will really need to try and bear in mind here. In fact, for proper and effective learning, you need to make sure that you are going above and beyond merely memorizing facts and figures. It’s much better to be able to have a deep and thorough understanding of something, as that is what is going to lead to real, integrated learning of a topic.
In other words, constantly aim to grasp the how and the why of whatever it is you are learning. If you can do that, you’re going to find that the concept is much more likely to stick for you, and that you are really going to experience the thrill of learning something deeply so much more easily and readily. One thing that can help here is to teach the concept aloud to someone else, as it highlights gaps in your understanding.
Use Active Learning Techniques
Most people find that passively reading information or watching videos is not really the best way to learn something. Instead, you will probably find that you need to make use of more active learning techniques. This is something that you can do relatively easily - it’s just about finding ways to really dig in and get involved in the process as well as you can. So instead of just reading and watching idly, consider whether you might be able to improve your learning by doing more active things.
That might include taking notes where you put the core concepts into your own words, or quizzing yourself regularly. For that, you could make use of an AI tool like Quizgecko, where you can have quizzes made up for you that are going to test your knowledge on a given subject. This is a really powerful learning aid, and the kind of thing that is going to help you to retain knowledge so much more effectively and fully.
You can also try applying what you’ve learned to real scenarios or situations. All of that is going to help you to have a much more active style of learning, which is always going to be so much more effective.
Break It Up
Your brain can only concentrate for so long, and you will need to make sure you are giving it breaks if you want to make your learning effective. The fact is that breaking up your learning is always going to mean you find it easier, but also that the brain is going to store the information a lot more effectively for real as well. This is backed up by research on memory and learning, which has shown pretty consistently that you are able to learn better with spaced repetition and distributed practice.
In other words, when you are tempted to just carry on and go through the night, you may not actually be doing yourself any favors. It’s probably much more likely that you are going to learn well if you give yourself plenty of breaks.
Get Enough Sleep
This is another way to help ensure that your brain really is able to learn well. Sleep is more than just time for recovery and rest, it’s also where your brain does most of its consolidating of memories. If you get a good night’s sleep after or before learning, you are going to find that the information just does stick much more effectively, and it’s amazing what a difference this really can make. So if you know that you tend to need some help with your sleep, that is the kind of thing you might want to work on in particular.
That could be as simple as going to bed a little earlier, or ensuring that you are reducing your caffeine intake. Whatever it takes, better sleep is certainly going to help a great deal.
Exercise And Move Around
If you are stuck in a rut with your study, you might want to consider moving around a little physically. This can actually help you a great deal, and you might be quite surprised just how much. Physical activity improves brain function, mood and focus, and it helps ensure that you are going to find study and learning so much easier on the whole. It also increases blood flow to the brain which is proven to make study sessions a lot more effective.
So if you are able to get up and move around from time to time, that is going to really help you a lot in terms of your ability to learn, and you will find that you also feel so much better for it physically.
Those are just some of the best things you can do to improve your ability to learn, and you might want to make sure you are aware of these and put them into place as soon as possible.
