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

141–150 of 196 posts

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

#141

Post by copperx »

ssijak wrote: post #122
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…

I agree in general, but reading 3-page summary will not leave you with deep impression if it is applicable/correct and why. Blog posts are like that and how many you read vs how many you changed your behavior? I tried one of the services that provide summaries for the books but disliked it. But I agree that this books, in general, could have around 100-150 pages, 200 tops.

One of the promises of hypertext was to be able to "dig in" into deeper information if you wanted to. It would be nice to see a single page summary of a book, and then be able to click on hyperlinks to see more details about the interesting bits. Self-help books and textbooks are ideal for this, but I can see that it's a lot of work to structure something like that.

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

#142

Post by pfranz »

stinkytaco wrote: post #113
softawre wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My wife and I were thinking trying to teach that in HS would be written off more than college.

Honestly, teachers are all professional educators. The basic principals should be taught throughout school--effectively part of it.

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

#143

Post by CaRDiaK »

Took the course, loved it. Bought the book, loved it. Encouraged my partner to check it out, she stuck through it. 3 years later she's about to graduate from college with her basic counselling education and experience behind her where she hit top of the class. She's about to set out on her own. This course was a massive driver and I'm not sure she'd have gone this way this quickly without it.

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

#144

Post by andy_ppp »

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…

You're looking for https://www.blinkist.com - I've not bought anything yet but that's what they do.

I do feel a lot of self help books are often hammering home a single point over 500 pages. By the end even the authors tend to seem bored of writing their chapters.

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

#145

Post by PaulRobinson »

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…

The Learning How to Learn course is free. They're not making money from it.

They are arguably gaining reputation from it.

However, I do not think it's true that they're making the same point over and over again. There is little repeated content, and what is repeated is done in a way that triggers recall.

It is a content-dense course, and to put this in the same bucket as an airport best-seller self-help book is deeply unfair.

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

#146

Post by marklgr »

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 call these books candy for the brain. That audience just love to feel smart, wise or "aware" (depending on the specific subgenre), and these books give them just that -- pleasant feelings. Napoleon Hill is perhaps the poster child of brain candy, and once you realize a lot of today's books are the (supposedly) backed-by-science versions of the same recipe, the whole genre loses almost all interest.

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

#147

Post by PaulRobinson »

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…

>> The techniques suggested are things many people are already familiar with [...]

And you then list 11 concepts, 5 of which I'd never heard of before I took this course, 3 more which I had not associated with aiding learning and the remaining 3 not being sufficient to help me learn more.

Your tone is unhelpful, elitist and snobby. This course is extremely useful to a lot of people - there is a reason it's popular, a reason why I recommend it to many others who seem to be struggling with studying, and a reason why this should not be the top-voted comment.

I'm sorry but I find HN utterly dismal when people say things like "Oh, Einstellung, Feynman and chunking? Sure everybody knows that, right?"

Go have a think about this: https://xkcd.com/1053/

And next time, try and be more encouraging of others, please.

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

#148

Post by fullmoon »

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.

Which of her books are you referring to?

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

#149

Post by tonyedgecombe »

sien wrote: post #84
cpsempek wrote: post #78

I find this interesting for two reasons. I think I recall that not too long ago, the most popular course on coursera was Ng's ML course. It is ironic that people are now more interested in teaching oneself how to learn versus a machine. This change could be attributed to other reasons like change in user demographics, or, market saturation, so that naturally popular courses will change once a large majority moves fro…

It is the most popular course on Coursera because it's ~3 hours of lectures and ~3 hours of study and it seems to be advertised for everyone who logs on to Coursera. Andrew Ng's Course is 11 weeks and it's about ~5 hours a week and on top of that you'd really want to be quite able at High School Maths and have some programming background.

It also has a broad appeal, someone could be studying social sciences or computer science and find it equally applicable.

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

#150

Post by poppingtonic »

jamestimmins wrote: post #72
davidgrenier wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work several subjects in parallel (three books currently). I go through each chapter twice. Once to understand the material then moving on to another book. When I come back to the former book I go through the chapter again creating Anki cards for anything notable. The sheer amount of material I notice I had completely forgotten on the second reading is astounding. I go through the Anki cards daily, in the morning I…

Can you elaborate on why it's valuable to go through different books in parallel? My goal has always been to do one thing at a time, so the idea that the opposite if beneficial is interesting.

These two blog posts by K. Eric Drexler explain why this is important. It's related to learning subjects you have no familiarity with.

[1] http://metamodern.com/2009/05/27/how-to-learn-about-everythi...

[2] http://metamodern.com/2009/05/17/how-to-understand-everythin...

Post reply on HN