IV. Principle 1: Meta-learning

Question 1

What is meta-learning?

Answer 1

Learning how to learn a particular subject.

Question 2

What are 3 things to observe at the meta-learning stage of an ultralearning project?

Answer 2

1. How a subject works
2. What kinds of skills and information must be mastered
3. What methods are available to do so effectively

Question 3

At the meta-learning stage, what are the 3 questions we need to answer?

Answer 3

1. Why are we learning this?
2. What do we need to learn?
3. How are we going to learn it?

Question 4

What are the two broad motivations for any given ultralearning project?

Answer 4

1. Instrumental: in pursuit of a non-learning outcome

2. Instrinsic: undertaking the project for its own sake

Question 5

What is one of the key benefits of asking WHY you are undertaking an ultralearning project?

Answer 5

If you know why you’re learning, you can focus on what matters to your aims and ignore the rest.

Question 6

If pursuing an instrumental ultralearning project, what is the additional research step worth taking?

What is a tactic for completing this?

Answer 6

Determine whether learning the skill etc will actually help you achieve your goal. Make sure you’re not barking up the wrong tree.

The expert interview method: talk to someone who has already achieved your desired results, and ask whether they think your project will help you towards your goal.

Question 7

When working out the WHAT of our ultralearning project, what categories do we split the learning material up into?

Answer 7

1. Concepts
2. Facts
3. Procedures

Question 8

How do you define concepts? (ultralearning)

Answer 8

Anything that needs to be understood, not simply memorized.

Question 9

How do we define facts? (ultralearning)

Answer 9

Anything that simply requires memorization

Question 10

How do we define procedures? (ultralearning)

Answer 10

Anything that needs to be practiced.

Question 11

Once we’ve filled out our concepts/facts/procedures table, what is the next step (ultralearning)?

Answer 11

Underline the concepts, facts and procedures that are the most important and the most challenging.

Question 12

What are the 2 methods we use to work out HOW to conduct our ultralearning project?

Answer 12

1. Benchmarking

2. The Emphasize/Exclude method

Question 13

What is ‘benchmarking’ as related to ultralearning?

What are some potential sources?

Answer 13

Starting a learning project by finding the common ways in which people learn the proposed subject.

Sources include:

1. course curricula
2. Online search
3. Expert interview

Question 14

What is the ‘Emphasize/Exclude’ method?

Answer 14

Customising the default curriculum you’ve found for your subject, by removing unnecessary elements and focusing on key features.

This is done in light of the goals of your learning project, which were established back in the ‘why’ section of the research.

Question 15

What is the rule of thumb for the amount of research to do before diving into an ultralearning project?

Answer 15

~10%. If the project size scales significantly, can slide towards 5%.