Wednesday, March 11, 2015

The joys of learning

There's no better way to learn how something novel works than to try it. In that spirit, I've joined a MOOC -- a Massive Online Open Course. This one is World War 1: Changing Faces of Heroism offered by the University of Leeds.

I've just started, so I can't really comment on the content; but you know I probably will eventually.

The online environment in which the course is offered is something called Future Learn. It is very much based on the idea that we all have different learning styles -- some of us are primarily visual learners, others learn best by ear ... so all materials are presented in multiple styles: videos, text, recordings.

There's a video explaining this, from which I captured the image above. I simply found it interesting. I do "read" a great many books by ear, often while running or walking. Sometimes I feel that I have really comprehended the current book; other times not so well. I think I'll try to collect samples and figure out what makes the difference. The readers? The sort of material? What other factors?

Isn't learning fun?

(By the way, the educational theory that we use different learning styles is currently being vigorously debunked by neuroscientists. Oh well ....)

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