Learning How To Learn - Interview with Barbara Oakley

Dr. Barbara Oakley visited McMaster University in October 2016 to deliver her keynote lecture 'Learning How To Learn' at the Learning Technologies Symposium 2016.
Dr. Barbara Oakley is a Professor of Engineering at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan; a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, San Diego; and Coursera’s inaugural “Innovation Instructor.” Her work focuses on the complex relationship between neuroscience and social behavior. Dr. Oakley’s research has been described as “revolutionary” in the Wall Street Journal-she has published in outlets as varied as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. She has won numerous teaching awards, including the American Society of Engineering Education’s Chester F. Carlson Award for technical innovation in engineering education. Together with Terrence Sejnowski, the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute, she co-teaches Coursera - UC San Diego’s “Learning How to Learn,” the world’s most popular massive open online course. Her book A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra), (Penguin, 2014) is a New York Times best-selling science book.
Dr. Oakley has adventured widely through her lifetime. She rose from the ranks of Private to Captain in the U.S. Army, during which time she was recognized as a Distinguished Military Scholar. She also worked as a communications expert at the South Pole Station in Antarctica, and has served as a Russian translator on board Soviet trawlers on the Bering Sea. Dr. Oakley is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

[@uzanymuteb676]

Thank you so much Barbara!!! "Getting in touch with myself". WOW!!!

[@London_miss234]

Thinking in action

[@London_miss234]

Memorization and understanding - smartly said

[@___xyz___]

Not true! Of course you need to play a real guitar to know whether you improve or not, but I can attest that playing "air guitar" does actually improve recognition of finger patterns, understanding of proper technique and speed. I know this from having played guitar for 13 years, 90% of the time since learning the basics "air guitaring" to various songs with a focus on proper execution, and consequently having learned to play things I never thought I would be able to play, like sweeping, string skipping and challenging syncopations, without having actually touched a real guitar more than a dozen times a year! Of course, it's under the assumption that I knew the theory and techniques I was doing. If you're just "pretending" to be playing, you're not getting anywhere. But if the point Dr. Oakley was trying to get across was that _"no matter how hard you try, playing air guitar is a waste of time,"_ then I'm gonna be the first to tell you that this is a bad analogy and downright wrong. Playing air guitar, or whatever other activity you want to apply this analogy to, is not the same as physically interacting with the thing. It's a very different way of thinking. But exactly therefore it's valuable. It teaches you to reflect and to think about how you "would" do things, and to simulate the movement with inferior tools. This is not some ground breaking discovery. Professional athletes do it all the time. Closing one's eyes, mentally going through the entire set of movements required for the competition. It's been studied and found that all muscle groups indeed activate when stimulated in this way, suggesting that they are signalled to perform the action that is required even in a simulated state, and that the body understands this reflex. I propose that the same must be true for other (at least physical) activities, such as guitar playing, for this reason.

[@Clippetz]

Nicely put. Just imagining and visualizing myself driving significantly boosted my driving skills