Effective learning

Learn with minimum effort not sacrificing

your other commitments

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 Contents

 What is effective learning?

 What helps learning? – Ten ideas

 What makes you remember or recall?

 Effective Reading & Understanding -SQ3R Method

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 What Helps Learning – Ten
Ideas
1. Being free of negative 6. Identify relationships
emotions of knowledge
2. Link the new knowledge 7. Study “little and often”
to what you know
already
8. Think logically &
3. Look for applications /
critically
examples
4. Prepare to change your
existing knowledge/ 9. Engage in deep
behavior learning

5. Visualize what you

learn 10. “Build Up” rather than
“Taking In”
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What Makes You Remember Or
Recall?
(Text Based Learning)
Recalling – An Exercise
• Read through the following list of words,
at your normal speed one at a time,
consciously trying to remember every
word, making sure you do not go back
over any words that you have already
read
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Head Once
Turn And
Pay More
Now Clearly
Fee Together
Field Inch
The And
Of The
Left Then
And Of
To And
Of Case
Which The
Mahatma Repeat
Ghandhi
Same
The
other
Will
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 Factors that Influence Recall

o How many of the last six words can you remember?

o Can you remember any word that appeared more than
once?
o Can you remember any word or group of words that was
outstandingly different from all the others?
o Can you remember any other words?
o How many of the first six words can you remember?

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Factors that Influence Recall
Easily recalled Five factors
The beginning Primacy
The end
Recency
Things that are
linked Linking
Thing that are
Outstandingness
outstanding
Repeated ones Repetition (Review)

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Applying Primacy & Recency for
Memory Recall

• Fact that the brain recalls first and last

things best, is useful in learning situations

• Organize your study time to increase the

number of ‘first’ and ‘last’ situations
(break down the study time into small
durations)

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Primary & Recency Memory Recall
Rate

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 Applying Primacy & Recency For
Memory Recall Contd…

 Study “a little” at a time and study “often”

 Ideal study time : 10 to 45 minutes with
short rest periods of 2 to 5 minutes.

 During the rest period sort out the

information just taken in

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Applying Linking to Memory
Recall

 Linking is vital for understanding

 Consciously look for links between the

pieces of information

 Useful in note making

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Applying Outstandingness To Memory
Recall

Emphasize those areas that you want to

remember

(Make things LARGER than life)

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Retention rate vs time

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 Applying Repetition To Memory
Recall

• More repetition more easy to recall

• Read several times
• Recite as much as possible
• Use whenever possible

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 Effective Reading &
Understanding SQ3R Method

Five step process

• Survey
• Question
• Read
• Recite
• Review

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 SURVEY
 Get the quick overview of what you are going
to read (before you study in detail)
 It is like reading a road map before you take a
trip
 Not necessary to have answers for your
questions immediately
 Take no more than 5 – 10 minutes

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 How to Survey?

• Read the title

• This helps your brain begin to focus on the

topic of the Chapter
• Read the introduction and/or summary

• Read each boldface heading and subheading,

figures and captions

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 QUESTION
 Now you have surveyed and built a
framework for understanding
 Take all the major subheadings/key points in
the chapter and turn them into questions
and write them
 This is basically to help you organize your
thoughts in advance and also helps you to
keep your mind on what you are doing.
(Easier to remember this way, rather than just
remembering)
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 READING
• Read the chapter or article in order to find the
answers to your questions and write them
• While reading also make questions, such a way
that what are given in the text are the answers
to them
• Create a study guide for the chapter that will
make later reviews easier
• Make sure that all the questions made are
answered while reading
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 READING (Cont..)

• Try to read in such a way so that there is a

dialogue between you and the author
• Take notes, highlight and underline
• Write difficult words/ideas

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 RECITE
• Stop as often as you need to and try to recall
what you have just read, Express it in your own
words
• Just say to yourself or to a partner, loudly, what
you have just read
• Reciting forces you to read actively
• Helps you to realize whether you have really
understood what you read
• Helps you to correct mistakes and complete
missing points
Do it while you read, not after you finished 21
 REVIEW
• Take the study guide that you have
developed for the chapter and look it
over whenever possible
• If in doubt go back to the original source
and find out
• Best time to review is immediately after
first reading
• Reviewing as and when necessary and
before the exams is useful

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 REVIEW (CONT..)
• After four or five reviews the information will
enter the “long term memory”

• Review should be sensibly spaced out

• Review not all but only what you must

remember

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Activity
Review what we
learn
• Now that you've learned about the five
steps of the SQ3R process, see if you
answer these questions:

• What are the five steps of the SQ3R

process?

• What do you need to do to complete each

of the five steps of the process?
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Applied Sciences are NOT based
on only Reading And
Remembering
• SQ3R is applicable for text based
learning, but you have to remember in
applied sciences there are several ways
of acquiring knowledge other than
reading

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A practice on effective learning
• The free online course “C-DELTA ” (Commonwealth
Digital Education Leadership Training in Action),
helps to Improve
digital education
and leadership

• To register:
• Step 1: Go to https://cdelta.col.org .
• Step 2: Click sign up. Fill up your basic information and select
- Country : “Sri Lanka”
- Joining the course : “As part of an
organization/institute/group”.
- Organization :“OUSL Faculty of Engineering Technology”
- User type : “Student”
• Step 3 : receiving an conformation email.
• For more details: Dr. WAL Niwanthi ([email protected]) 26