Week2

Question 1

Concept mapping is an effective method for studying?

Answer 1

No

Question 2

Deliberate practice is an effective method for studying?

Answer 2

Yes

Question 3

Rereading the text is an effective method for studying?

Answer 3

No

Question 4

Testing yourself is an effective method for studying?

Answer 4

Yes

Question 5

Which two methods are effective ways of studying?

Answer 5

Deliberate practice and testing yourself.

Question 6

What are conceptual chunks?

Answer 6

Mental leaps that unite scattered bits of information through meaning,

Question 7

For what mode of learning is the mental octopus analogy used?

Answer 7

Focused mode.

Question 8

What’s understanding like? Analogy

Answer 8

Like a superglue that helps hold the underlying memory traces together.

Question 9

Can you create a chunk if you don’t understand?

Answer 9

Yes, but it’s often a useless chunk that won’t fit in with or relate to other material you are learning.

Question 10

What is chunks and chunking?

Answer 10

Chunks are compact packages of information that your mind can easily access.

Chunking is the mental leap that helps
you unite bits of information together
through meaning.

Question 11

Creating a chunk involves three steps, which are they?

Answer 11

1. Focus your undivided attention on the information you want to chunk
2. Understand the basic idea you’re trying to chunk
3. Gaining context

Question 12

Why is it important to have focused attention on what we try to learn?

Answer 12

When you first begin to learn something, you’re making new neural patterns and connecting them with preexisting patterns
that are spread through many areas of the brain.

Learning something new takes a lot of effort and it is recommended to have all working memory capacity dedicated to it.

Question 13

Learning takes place in two ways, which?

Answer 13

A bottom-up chunking process
A top-down big picture process

Question 14

What is a better, more simple, alternative to re-reading material for better learning?

Answer 14

Recall: After you’ve read the material, simply look away and see what you can recall from the material you’ve just read.

Question 15

Why is concept-mapping (drawing connections and relationships between the concepts you try to learn) not a really good learning technique?

Answer 15

If you’re trying to build connections between chunks before the basic chunks are embedded in the brain, it doesn’t work as well.

It’s like trying to learn advanced strategy in chess before you even understand the basic concepts of how the pieces move.

Question 16

Rereading can be good in some occations. When is it useful?

Answer 16

Rereading text seems to be effective if you let time pass between the readings, so that it becomes more of an exercise in spaced repetition.

Question 17

What is one of the most common “illusions of competence”?

Answer 17

Merely glancing at a given solution and thinking you truly know it yourself.

You must have the information persisting in your memory if you’re to master the material well enough to do well on tests and to think creatively with it.

Question 18

How can we make sure that we are not fooled into an illusion of competence?

Answer 18

By testing ourselves on what we want to learn.

Question 19

Describe the idea of transfer of chunks

Answer 19

When you grasp one chunk, you’ll find that that chunk can be related in surprising ways to similar chunks, not only
in that field, but also in very different fields.

Question 20

What is the law of serendipity?

Answer 20

Luck favors the one who tries

Question 21

What is overlearning?

Answer 21

Continuing to study or practice after you’ve mastered what you can in one session is called overlearning.

Question 22

When can overlearning be useful?

Answer 22

Overlearning can help produce an automaticity that can be important when there is a risk of choking.

For example when executing a serve in tennis, playing a perfect piano concerto or performing a speech in front of an audience.

Question 23

To avoid overlearning, we can perform deliberate practice.

Describe deliberate practice.

Answer 23

Repeating something you already know perfectly well is easy and can bring the illusion of competence that you’ve mastered the full range of material, when you’ve actually only mastered the easy stuff.

Instead, you want to balance your studies by deliberately focusing on what you find more difficult.

Question 24

What is einstellung?

Answer 24

Einstellung refers to a person’s predisposition to solve a given problem in a specific manner even though better or more appropriate methods of solving the problem exist. Mindset that could be potentially blocking you from seeing the solution.