Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Learning How to Learn,” the most popular course on Coursera

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 196 posts

Re: “Learning How to Learn,” the most popular course on Coursera

#111

Post by johnvonneumann »

tonyhb wrote: post #18

Dr Oakley also wrote "A Mind for Numbers", which is essentially this course in text form. The book is great as a a basis for the theory of learning, and dives into the same content (diffuse vs focused thinking, skimming chapters before reading etc.). I find having a text reference with dedicated time makes me learn more, so if you're interested in the course you'd probably also love the book.

Got this at home, bought it whilst doing the course a couple of years ago, I've been planning to get around to reading it, I'm gonna bump it up to my next up after I'm finished with "It".

Re: “Learning How to Learn,” the most popular course on Coursera

#112

Post by sn9 »

vira28 wrote: post #36
ambivalents wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but I also recently took the course, my notes* are here for anyone interested: https://workflowy.com/s/E9HW.jGUYboLrGj *Apologies if they are somewhat disorganized; they are generally broken down into the four discrete units that match the course. I wrote the notes with no intention that other eyes would see them :) feel free to reach out if you have any questions on them though

Thanks for the notes. I did first week and honestly felt it was too slow and somewhat discontinued. I am going to read your notes :)

The great thing about video lectures is they can usually be sped up 1.5-2x. For many lecturers, that makes it easier to concentrate on what they're saying since the pauses in their speech get reduced.

Re: “Learning How to Learn,” the most popular course on Coursera

#113

Post by stinkytaco »

softawre wrote: post #30
stinkytaco wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in college (some 20 years ago almost), they had a freshman course that more or less covered this and was required. Less science and more "life skills", it still had a lot on study discipline and covered many of the concepts in this course. I imagine many American universities do the same.

I never had this class in college (average state university). Would have appreciated it if I had.

As a freshman it seemed like the lamest thing ever. It wasn't particularly well executed, but if I had been more mature and less of an ass I think I'd haven gotten something out of it. Alas, it was wasted on me.

Re: “Learning How to Learn,” the most popular course on Coursera

#114

Post by surement »

sn9 wrote: post #112
vira28 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the notes. I did first week and honestly felt it was too slow and somewhat discontinued. I am going to read your notes :)

The great thing about video lectures is they can usually be sped up 1.5-2x. For many lecturers, that makes it easier to concentrate on what they're saying since the pauses in their speech get reduced.

I found that too! I can concentrate much better on a lecture with an increased speed. Never really thought about it but it makes sense that less pauses mean less occasions for the mind to wander.

It's been a gripe I've had with the Andrew Ng ML class: the audio is so bad that increasing the speed sometimes makes the lectures unintelligible. I appreciate lessons being offered for free but lecturers should really put more effort into the recording.

Re: “Learning How to Learn,” the most popular course on Coursera

#115

Post by sn9 »

Scarbutt wrote: post #27

For those who read her book and did the course, is there anything in the course that isn't covered by the book? what's the advantage of the course over the book? As a side note, I have found that the most powerful technique for me is recalling.

The main advantage of the course is that it's free.

Re: “Learning How to Learn,” the most popular course on Coursera

#116

Post by nlawalker »

sp527 wrote: post #9

Took the course. A lot of it is cruft and motivation for the underlying core ideas. The techniques suggested are things many people are already familiar with: recall, deliberate practice, interleaving, spaced repetition, Einstellung, Pomodoro, Feynman Method, Cornell notes or similar (to force recall), exercise regularly, sleep well, focus on concepts not facts (chunking), etc. A composite of these dramatically enhan…

>> A lot of it is cruft and motivation for the underlying core ideas.

Someone else made the exact same remark about Cal Newport's book "Deep Work" earlier this week in another thread.

I find this to be true about a lot of books/courses/content of a "self-help" nature that are designed to be practical and applicable - the real helpful stuff boiled down to its essence could fit in a tri-fold pamphlet (or a 350-line pastebin), but you can't make money selling a tri-fold pamphlet, so the content gets augmented with tons of case studies and variations on variations on variations of the core ideas to justify 200 pages or a multi-week course.

I stopped buying these kinds of books. Every one turned into "thumb to about page 60 to skip the intro/life story/motivating metaphor, read a few pages, and skim the beginning of each chapter after that."

Re: “Learning How to Learn,” the most popular course on Coursera

#117

Post by sp527 »

nlawalker wrote: post #116
sp527 wrote: post #9

Took the course. A lot of it is cruft and motivation for the underlying core ideas. The techniques suggested are things many people are already familiar with: recall, deliberate practice, interleaving, spaced repetition, Einstellung, Pomodoro, Feynman Method, Cornell notes or similar (to force recall), exercise regularly, sleep well, focus on concepts not facts (chunking), etc. A composite of these dramatically enhan…

>> A lot of it is cruft and motivation for the underlying core ideas. Someone else made the exact same remark about Cal Newport's book "Deep Work" earlier this week in another thread. I find this to be true about a lot of books/courses/content of a "self-help" nature that are designed to be practical and applicable - the real helpful stuff boiled down to its essence could fit in a tri-fold pamphlet (or a 350-line pas…

Agreed. There's a serious problem of information density in content these days. Most publisher-driven content is almost intentionally sparse. It takes tremendous expertise to weld information with context in a way that doesn't feel hollow and commercial.

Two books I've come across recently that do well to circumvent that problem: Sapiens by Yuval Harari and Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann. In both cases, you get a sense of the author distilling a lifetime's worth of knowledge and expertise into a form that seems hopelessly condensed, and in fact provokes you into further study. That's the mark of excellent exposition in my opinion.

Re: “Learning How to Learn,” the most popular course on Coursera

#118

Post by andreisoare »

nlawalker wrote: post #116
sp527 wrote: post #9

Took the course. A lot of it is cruft and motivation for the underlying core ideas. The techniques suggested are things many people are already familiar with: recall, deliberate practice, interleaving, spaced repetition, Einstellung, Pomodoro, Feynman Method, Cornell notes or similar (to force recall), exercise regularly, sleep well, focus on concepts not facts (chunking), etc. A composite of these dramatically enhan…

>> A lot of it is cruft and motivation for the underlying core ideas. Someone else made the exact same remark about Cal Newport's book "Deep Work" earlier this week in another thread. I find this to be true about a lot of books/courses/content of a "self-help" nature that are designed to be practical and applicable - the real helpful stuff boiled down to its essence could fit in a tri-fold pamphlet (or a 350-line pas…

I suppose this is why there is room for startups that summarize these books into a few pages.

Re: “Learning How to Learn,” the most popular course on Coursera

#119

Post by [deleted] »

nlawalker wrote: post #116
sp527 wrote: post #9

Took the course. A lot of it is cruft and motivation for the underlying core ideas. The techniques suggested are things many people are already familiar with: recall, deliberate practice, interleaving, spaced repetition, Einstellung, Pomodoro, Feynman Method, Cornell notes or similar (to force recall), exercise regularly, sleep well, focus on concepts not facts (chunking), etc. A composite of these dramatically enhan…

>> A lot of it is cruft and motivation for the underlying core ideas. Someone else made the exact same remark about Cal Newport's book "Deep Work" earlier this week in another thread. I find this to be true about a lot of books/courses/content of a "self-help" nature that are designed to be practical and applicable - the real helpful stuff boiled down to its essence could fit in a tri-fold pamphlet (or a 350-line pas…

[deleted]

Re: “Learning How to Learn,” the most popular course on Coursera

#120

Post by CuriouslyC »

sp527 wrote: post #117
nlawalker wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> A lot of it is cruft and motivation for the underlying core ideas. Someone else made the exact same remark about Cal Newport's book "Deep Work" earlier this week in another thread. I find this to be true about a lot of books/courses/content of a "self-help" nature that are designed to be practical and applicable - the real helpful stuff boiled down to its essence could fit in a tri-fold pamphlet (or a 350-line pas…

Agreed. There's a serious problem of information density in content these days. Most publisher-driven content is almost intentionally sparse. It takes tremendous expertise to weld information with context in a way that doesn't feel hollow and commercial. Two books I've come across recently that do well to circumvent that problem: Sapiens by Yuval Harari and Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann. I…

The problem of low information density isn't new. Most of the "classics" of western literature have the same problem. We're just more attuned to it now because we've been trained by internet articles to expect an idea to be introduced, explored and concluded in 1000-2000 words. Beyond that, these days many people won't even bother with that if there isn't a quick hook or a TL;DR that sucks them into reading further.
Post reply on HN