Active learning method: how it changed my way of studying
What are the benefits of active learning?
We all have been there. Trying hard to study, putting hours and hours of effort on some subject and weeks later… We don’t remember half of what we studied. And why that happens? A lot of reasons could be pointed out here, but for me, the one that stands out is the learning method.
What are learning methods? They are ways of acquiring knowledge from different procedures. The most famous ones are active method and passive learning method. Both have different activities inside of them. Let’s start with passive learning method:
Passive Learning Method
With this method, the student absorbs content without practical use of them. This includes reading a book, listening to a podcast, watching a YouTube video or watching a standard class. This keeps the content fresh in our brain for one or two days, but slowly the information gets out of our memory, since the brain removes all information it judges unnecessary.
According to the Glasser Pyramid, lectures, reading and audiovisual knowledge are respectively 5%, 10% and 20% absorbed. This is a really low percentage (at least I would want this to be at least 75%).
Active Learning Method
On the other hand, we have the active learning method. This stands mostly for ways of demonstrating and practicing what you learned. For example, lets say you are learning to speak portuguese. An active method is to talk with a native! This recall your active learning and expands connections in your brain!
Take a look on the pyramid above again, we can see that being in a Discussion Group or Doing something absorbs respectively 50% and 75% of the information. That is huge compared to passive learning percentages. And the method that mostly keeps the information in our brain is teaching others. You cannot teach something that you don’t understand and know.
Why knowing this change the way I study?
This piece of information changed entirely the way I study. I used to be reading and watching a lot of courses and classes, but no practice or just a bit of it. This doesn’t work for me and for most of the people. After learning that, I did not stopped reading and watching classes. But I started to practice what I read/watched, started to write about it and talk about it with family or friends. Sometimes I even teach myself about something. And that is the trick here. Combine active and passive learning, but with emphasis on active learning, because as the old proverb, practice leads to perfection. Find the way that you like the most and keep up! Consistency is the key. Tools like flashcards are useful too when keeping a fresh content in mind. Google up about this techniques!
Thanks for reading!
Lorenzo