Self-study requires determination, organization, and self-confidence. You need the determination to make it all the way through to the end. You need the organizational skills to create your plan to reach your learning goal. You will need the self-confidence to move into new areas without hesitation or intimidation. Even if you start with little self-confidence, you can build it up.
When you desire to learn something and you set out to learn it, we will call that effort a learning project. This course will give you the tools to develop your own self-study style. The lessons for this course are:
We will borrow a concept from Howard Gardner and his book Frames of Mind, where he identified seven talents for learning that he calls intelligences (see this website http://www.swopnet.com/ed/TAG/7_Intelligences.html for the original list). We will call these talents learning talents. Understanding the learning talents that work best for you will allow you to hone your own self-study skills and will help in choosing the best study habits and materials for you.
Get a piece of paper and note theses seven categories, these are our seven learning talents: linguistic, musical, logical/mathematical, spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, personal, and social.
As you go you will put check marks next to the various talents. A single check mark will indicate that it is a talent you use. Two check marks will indicate an important talent that you use a lot. Three check marks indicate a talent that you use all the time.
Step 1: Get a note pad or paper. Follow along with each step and then perform the listed task.
Step 2: Decide what you want to learn. Write it down. This will be the ultimate goal of your learning project.
Step 3: Decide on a general approach on how to divide the subject of your learning project into smaller achievable parts. You must decice how many sessions you want to spend, and what the goals of each session will be. I advice no more than three specific goals for each session.
Step 4: Set aside a place where you will study. This can be as simple as a favorite chair in your room, a desk in your office, a table at the local library, or any other specific place that you can associate with learning.
Step 5: Before each learning session relax and get comfortable. Take several deep breaths and allow any tension you are feeling to ease. Do some simple stretching exercises. Get the blood flowing to your head.
Step 6: Have you set aside a time for study? What is the best time for you to study? If you are unsure about this, write down your daily routine and determine where you have times that you can devote to your study. In most cases you will find that you have plenty of time to study.
Step 7: Develop a preliminary deadline for accomplishing each intermediate objective, or for conducting each study session. Be realistic about this, if you think it will take ten sessions to learn something and you can only do two sessions each week, then plan for a six week deadline. Always add a what-if factor into your deadlines, this way you can be prepared for unforeseen events.
Step 8: Determine how much money you have left each month after all of your expenses are paid. How much of what is left, if there is anything left, can you spend on the project. It is entirely possible to do a learning project with only a dollar a month (or even for nothing)! Make up a budget for your project.
Step 9: Decide what you will need to complete your learning project based on your goals and deadlines. As a bare minimum, you will need to purchase a notebook and writing instruments. What actual learning materials will you need? A list of possible educational materials, and how you can access them, can be found at the end of this lesson. Be sure to take your learning style into account.
This is where abstracts for research papers found in journals are collected. These are intended to be used to determine whether a paper is of interest to you. Classically the abstract of a paper contains the essential elements of a paper in a few sentences. You can quickly become acquainted with the current research in a field by reading through a wide sampling of the abstracts of relevant papers. This has three benefits: you can glean a lot of information without getting bogged down in details, you can learn the names of the major contributors of your field of study, and you can determine what papers you will want details about. You can find abstract journals at most university libraries specializing in a field of study (say biochemistry). The librarian will most likely be glad to help you find what you are looking for. There are also Internet-based abstracting services; these can cut down the time you spend looking for something by tailoring the search to your needs. Some of these are free, some of these cost a lot! Many libraries will subscribe to Internet-based abstract lists.
Audio courseware and books are becoming more numerous, and thus easier to find. The best thing about this medium is that you can control your pace through it. If you want to hear a lecture again, just replay it. Another advantage over a traditional course is that you control when and where it takes place. A cautionary note, it is easy to be distracted while listening to audio courseware, so make sure to limit the possibilities of this happening when you use this medium.
Most universities and colleges publish a bulletin of the courses they offer. These publications provide you with a detailed topic list of many different subjects. Having a few of these catalogs available can guide you to developing personal courses by mimicking the sequence of topics found there. If you work hard enough you can duplicate their courses on your own. In my opinion the three best catalogs, for scientific purposes, are those of MIT, Caltech, and Harvard.
There are three ways that you can use a university or college for their courses. You can enroll as a special student and take a course in the normal way. An alternative to this is to look up the courses of interest on the college/university webpage and download the syllabus, course outline, what materials are required by the instructor, and download any additional materials (sometimes this can be whole electronic books that are available free of charge), and then work through the materials as if you were taking the course. Or, you can ask the instructor if it would be all right to sit in on the course, for no credit (just to learn the material).
Every profession has meetings and conferences where researchers and experts meet to discuss their findings. These can be a wonderful place to network with insiders, get the scoop on the latest developments, and possibly present your work. A word of warning, if you are uncertain of your facts it is best to keep a low profile, these are places where reputations can be destroyed. They are also very expensive, but worth it if you want to do work in the chosen field.
If you are unable to take normal courses due to time constraints or distance, many colleges and universities offer what are called distance learning courses. These are courses administered through the mail or over the computer.
If you live near a "learning store" you can pick up interesting items for home laboratories or computers. Most of these things will be aimed at children, though you can usually find something useful to adults too.
The best general encyclopedia, in my humble opinion, is Encyclopedia Britannica. You can get the entire thing on CD for about $100. If you have a computer that can run it, get it! This is an excellent way of getting a quick overview of any topic. It is a great starting point.
There is nothing that brings dull facts and figures to life like actually trying something with your hands. In science, the only way to be sure that an idea is true is to verify it with an experiment. There are many good books on how to conduct experiments. The two best books, in my opinion, are: E. Bright Wilson, Jr. (1990), An Introduction to Scientific Research, Dover Publications, Inc. (this is a reproduction of a 1952 publication of the same name by McGraw-Hill), and Joseph J. Carr (1992), The Art of Science, High Text Publications, Inc.
These are similar to encyclopedias, but they are limited to a specific field. They tend to have more in-depth articles than those found in general encyclopedias. In my opinion the best is the McGaw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, and many large libraries have it. Almost every field has one or more of these. If your are going to do work in a specific field, you might want to consider getting one of these.
If you can locate a place where experts in a field hang out you can learn a lot by hanging out there yourself. At the very least you will get to know people who are working in the field. You can strike up conversations, ask questions, and make friends.
These are a blessing, and a curse. There is nothing quite like getting 2,000,000 hits on a search request. Get to know how to use them. The one I use most often these days is www.google.com.
These are good for getting a quick and painless overview of a subject. You can also get a taste for the current research being done in a field. A word of warning though, these are not a good substitute for textbooks or monographs. They may contain a lot of detail, but they are ultimately written for the nonspecialist.
If you can make friends with someone involved in a field, begin a collaboration by correspondence. Save copies of all of the letters written. Eventually you will have an impressive collection of the thoughts of all parties involved. Today this can be done by email.
These are a great resource for anyone wanting to learn. Whether you have a specific topic in mind, or you decide simply to roam around and look through books as the whim strikes you, you can find many interesting things in a library. I recommend making regular trips to various libraries in your area.
You can find up-to-date news items in these, though be wary; most of the writers are not experts in the fields that they report on. Factual errors can creep in unexpectedly.
These are books written by experts for experts. There is usually no attempt to explain the background of the topic under study. There is a lot of meat in these, but it can be hard going.
The only substitute for an experiment is an observation taken from nature. Observations have the drawback that they are uncontrolled, and thus it is difficult to limit the number of variables that can be accounted for. Many sciences are very much observation-based: archaeology, astronomy, ecology, geology, meteorology, etc. Spending a day in the field making observations can be a great source of information. Please note that you can make observations in museums and zoos too.
If you can make friends with an expert in a field of study you can learn a lot. By making appointments for interviews or tutoring sessions you have the opportunity to get first hand information and practical tips that will be difficult to get anywhere else.
If you have sufficient expertise to tackle professional research papers, you can get the details of current research from these journals. Every field has them. Many journals are now electronic and available on the web. If you can read these and understand them congratulations, you have made it!
If you want to find out the current state of the art in a field, and you do not want to wade through literally hundreds of papers; then you want to find a review paper of your chosen field. Review journals can save an expert a lot of time by presenting the current thinking in a concise way. The objective of a review is not to report on the research of the author, it is to report on the current state of the field.
If there are science supply houses, or technical retailers in your area get to know them. They can provide you with equipment and also specifications for equipment. You can learn a lot about a field by studying the tools used.
Every university and most colleges have seminar courses where students and faculty present their work. Most of the time you can ask the organizer for permission to attend. Most will happy to allow this. This is a fairly painless way to learn about what is going on in a field of study.
If there is a government, or university, surplus clearing house nearby then you have a wonderful opportunity to get really expensive equipment cheap. I recently acquired a $1500 microscope for only $100! Another place to get good science stuff, is eBay and LabStuff.
This is said to be the great wasteland. Like any good wasteland, though, there are places worth seeing in it. Keep an eye on the TV listings, particularly for the Discover Channel or the History Channel for good quality programming in your area of interest. The same warning for Magazines applies here; the bulk of these shows are written by professional writers, not experts in the field they are covering. There are also video courses that are very good.
These are books whose intent is to teach a subject. Most are lectures that have been refined and written down. I recommend getting more than one book about any subject you are studying.
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