I wanted to write a post on self-learning for already quite some time. And today I stumbled upon a very interesting research paper, that reviews how students perceive their self-studying, what are common pitfalls and mistakes. The paper is:
Bjork RA, Dunlosky J, Kornell N (2013) Self-Regulated Learning: Beliefs, Techniques, and Illusions. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 64:417–44
It is a psychological paper, written in a very clear language, which is easy to understand for non-professional, as long as you know basic terminology from cognitive sciences. One of the major conclusions there is that people in overall are not really efficient as self-learners. The main reason for that is biased decision-making when judging efficiency of learning techniques and methods. In particular the paper says that spacing and interleaving is often overlooked and underestimated, whereas methods that improve short-term memory (like cramming) are perceived as more advantageous due to their quick benefits.
This makes perfect sense to me, because from the decision-making theory it is known how many fallacies are present in the human judgement due to for example law of small numbers and cherry picking. And why not making the same errors when deciding how to study?
Afterall not so many people actually have the system when they learn. The individualized system that would be created based on accurate observations and experimenting with learning conditions and methods. Most people that I know actually tend to delegate the responsibility for studying on someone else, by trying to find a teacher, or buy a book, or enroll into some online course. And if a teacher/book/course 'fails" (which is not obligatory the teacher's fault), then they look for another one. And then another one. Even though there is a good course on "Learning how to learn" (which I yet need to finish ;)) with Barbara Oakley and Terrence Sejnowski.
And this is one more problem, as I see it. Motivation. Self-studying requires tons of motivation. As long as it is there everything is going to be fine or at least not bad, Sooner or later, depending on efficiency. And keeping youself motivated is not so easy. If only there was a teacher for that... Ah, what? Wait! There are lots of them: people who inspire all around. Maybe I will need to make a list of people who inspire me one day. Nice idea!
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