Target learners

This learning module is intended for adult learners who are looking to upskill in their careers by taking additional courses. This course will teach you how to study more efficiently. A bachelor’s degree in any subject is required before taking this learning module. Prior research experience is highly encouraged but students who does not have this experience are also welcome to participate in this learning module. 

Learning outcomes rationale 

At the end of this learning module, the students will be able to:

• Demonstrate qualities of effective learning
• Engage in readings, lecture videos, and research papers more effectively
• Reduce the number of study hours without jeopardizing learning outcomes

Anticipated duration

This learning module is designed to be completed over the course of 4 weeks. For every week, the students are expected to spend about 2 hours on the updates, 2 hours on the project, and 2 hours on self-study.

Material requirements

1. Notebook, pen and paper

2. Digital tablets (i.e iPads)

3. Laptop

4. Strong internet connections

To understand your personal study habits, please take this 5-minute survey. 

Education in the 21st century

In the industrialized economy of the early 20th century, the focus of education was to relay information. The goal of schooling was to teach people how to possess facts and procedures. Facts refer to known information about the world. For example, the heart pumps blood throughout the body is a fact. On the other hand, procedures refer to step-by-step instructions for solving problems. For example, to solve algebraic equations, you have to work out the value of the unknown variable by adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing both sides of the equation by the same value. There are step-by-step guides on how to solve the problem. In the workplace context, the procedures would then refer to the standard operating procedures that every organization has to create systems and achieve the goal of the organization. Memorizing facts and knowledge was one of the learning objectives in the industrial age, but this is no longer the case in the knowledge economy era of the 21st century. 

Figure 1: Education for the 4th Industrial Revolution (TEDx Talks, 2019). 

The goal of education in the 21st century is to ensure that learners are able to:

1. Have a deep conceptual understanding of complex concepts and the ability to work with them creatively to generate new ideas, new theories, new products and new knowledge.

2. Being able to critically evaluate the information they received

3. Clear communication skills both verbally and in writing

4. Learning integrated and usable knowledge, rather than the sets of compartmentalized and decontextualized facts emphasized by instructionism

5. Being able to take responsibility for their own continuing and lifelong learning.

6. Being able to understand scientific and mathematical thinking

In the next section, we will delve into the four steps towards effective learning, adapted from the book “Learn Better” by Ulrich Boser. In the book, Boser mentioned six steps towards effective learning but in this learning module, I have complied them into four steps that consist of pre-learning (step 1 & 2) , the process of learning (step 3) and lastly the post-learning (step 4).We will discuss actionable steps you can take to achieve the goal of learning in the 21st century so that you can make better use of the materials that you have invested.

Step 1: Finding your intrinsic motivation for the learning

Intrinsic motivation refers to engaging in an activity for the inherent pleasure and satisfaction derived from the activity itself, rather than for some separable outcome or external reward. Intrinsically motivated individuals are driven by curiosity, interest, enjoyment and the desire for mastery. Students with high intrinsic motivation engage in learning because they find it interesting, enjoyable, or challenging. They are motivated by the process of learning and the satisfaction it brings, not by grade, praise or other external rewards.

Step 2: Creating goals of the learning

To gain knowledge, we need to have a dedicated way to acquire that knowledge. In the first update section, we have already covered the six goals of education in the 21st century. It is essential that we set our learning target to meet the goal of education in the 21st century so that our learning becomes more effective and useful in the 21st century.

Theory 1: Targeting learning and creating learning systems

Learning to learn often boils to a type of project oversight. It’s about creating objectives and then figuring out ways to reach those objectives with clear and achievable benchmarks. For example, if you are looking to master coding, creating learning systems could be blocking your calendar for 2 hours every Wednesday to practice about coding.

Figure 2: Professor Hattie on Communicating the learning target (Corwin, 2015). 

Theory 2: Prior knowledge

To learn something new, the skills or knowledge has to be just right. The skill can’t be too far beyond our current level of skills or we become lost in a haze of learning confusion. But the knowledge also can’t be too easy or we don’t learn anything at all. The best place to learn, then is just beyond what we can know or can do. There is no learning without some prior knowledge. Facts and figures are the first step to richer forms of thought and we need background knowledge to understand just about anything.

Please watch this video at 9:38 on prior knowledge

Figure 3: How I ranked 1st at Monash University: 4-step framework (Justin Sung, 2023).

Theory 3: Self-efficacy

Self efficacy refers to a belief in one’s ability, a feeling that one’s going to succeed and it turns out to be crucial in dealing with the emotional vagaries of learning. It’s a way to manage our feelings. People need to have the expectations of successes. Specifically, bandura found that people are far more likely to engage in an activity if they know that they can accomplish the activity. Self-efficacy is different than an overall feeling of confidence. It’s not a matter of self-esteem. Instead, the idea revolves around the belief that we can accomplish a very specific task, that we can achieve positive outcomes in what we aim to do. This expectations of success brings all sorts of benefits. If we believe that we can accomplish a task, we’re far more likely to put forth effort. With a greater sense of self-efficacy, we are also far more likely to achieve our goals and be happier with the results. Just as important, self-efficacy sparks focus. It makes us more targeted in our goals, and so we’re far better able to handle diversions. With more confidence, we are more committed. We have a deeper sense of control, a richer sense of agency. Self-efficacy operates as a buffer for the inevitable frustrations of learning. When we know what we’re going to achieve, we’re better equipped to deal with setbacks and distractions, with the bruised feelings and dedicated focus that learning requires. When people learn, they need ways to cope with various nagging feelings: Am I good enough? Will I fail? What if I’m wrong? Isn’t there something else that I’d rather be doing? There are a number of ways to manage these thoughts and emotions and we have to write out plans, map out long-term strategy, to help keep ourselves motivated.

Figure 4: Why Self-Efficacy Matters (TEDx Talks, 2019b). 

Step 3: The process and application of learning

A) Developing knowledge

Evaluation and feedback: the most effective feedback would indicate that the answer was wrong and then would provide some slight hints. Evaluation and feedback a common tools that we use in formal education but not all of them are effective.
Performance monitoring: when we track performance, patterns of behavior become clear. Oftentimes, we ourselves are not very sure where we stand in terms of understanding the concepts.
Retrieval practice: referred to as the testing effects since the practice is a matter of people asking themselves questions about what they have just learned.
Repetition: people engage with an idea at least three times before they actually learn it. This is also one of the reasons why if you see marketing campaigns, they usually try to follow your digital footprint through cookies and show you their marketing collateral a few times to get your attention.
Mental doing and struggle

Figure 5: Brain Hack: 6 secrets to learning faster, backed by neuroscience (TedxTalks, 2023). 

B) Extending knowledge

Arguments: arguments are another form of learning expansion, we improve our knowledge of the field by making flesh-out connections within a field. It boots expertise by pushing people to think through an area of mastery. It also forces us to engage with reasoning.
Imitation: imitation occurs when we know about the facts concretely. There’s nothing abstract or vague and our brain likes things to be tangible, therefore, when things are direct and material they are easier to understand.
Protégé effect: protégé effect is a form of knowledge application. By providing a lesson on a topic, we are giving our own twist on an idea. We are articulating what’s important about the topic, putting it into our own words, and thus improving our expertise.

C) Relating knowledge

Finding connections: finding causes, analogs, and differences while mixing up with practice can help with learning more effectively because people have a better sense of the underlying relationships.
Problem-solving: problem-solving is a true test to building expertise because understanding systems helps people use their knowledge in different contexts.

Figure 6: 3 levels of mind maps every student MUST Master (Sung, 2024). 

Step 4: Re-evaluating the learning

The 3Rs of post learning: reviewing, revisiting and reflecting. It is easy to be overconfident in the skills that we have. We often think we know more than we actually do.

Figure 7: Evaluating Learning with Pre & Post-Training Tests (Kenneth Chan, 2021)

Re-evaluating learning is about reconsidering our understanding and learning from our learning. The problem with the human brain is that we often get too overconfident about the knowledge that we acquire. Overconfidence is particularly harmful to engaging in more challenging forms of learning. If we think we know something, we are simply not going to take the hard steps of relating ideas of extending what we know. We must review what we have learned to truly know that we understand the concept. This involves reviewing, revisiting, and reflecting on our learning experience.

Expert blind spot refers to the inability to perceive the difficulties that novices will experience as they approach a new domain of knowledge(Nathan et al., n.d.). One driver of an expert blind spot is familiarity. If an idea or fact comes easily to us - or we have just come across it a lot we are far more likely to think that we know something about it even if we actuallydon't. It is important that if we are already familiar with the subject, to revisit the material again and be open to hearing different perspectives from outsider point of view. 

Instructions:

Please choose a topic that you are interested in learning more, for example, cryptocurrency, coding or courses that will help you upskill in your own career. Once you have picked a topic, you would then have to teach the course to another peer in a form of learning module. The learning module can be a recorded video of your lecture or it could also be text-based.

Requirements:

1. You have to divide your learning modules into three different areas – pre-learning, process of learning and post-learning.

2. In the pre-learning part of the module, you have to include prompts or reflective questions to find the intrinsic motivation of the students you are teaching. You also have to include some forms of learning plan.

3. In the process of learning part of the module, you have to incorporate learning strategies we have previously mentioned in the updates.

4. In the post learning part of the module, you have to include assessment and evaluation plan to ensure that the learning objectives have been achieved.

5. The recommended length for the learning module is 15-20 minutes.

The rubrics are attached below.

Please take this post-course survey to evaluate your learning and how much this learning module has been helpful.

Participation: Completed all the readings and the videos from the updates

Peer Review Project: Completed the peer-review project and reviewed one other peer’s project.