“Forget what you were taught in school,” said university teachers to newly minted students. And it would be necessary: ”Forget how you were taught in school.” Adults learn differently than children. If you remember this, you can learn anything – even without the help of teachers.
Pedagogy vs. andragogy
The difference of objects is already visible from their names. Pedagogy is a discipline about teaching children, andragogics is about teaching adults.
Andragogy gives the leading role in teaching to adult students. They themselves decide what and how to learn, set goals for themselves, determine the regularity and content of classes. Total freedom, along with responsibility for the result, inspire and frighten at the same time. It seems to be healthy: the student can finally dispose of himself without regard to the mossy curriculum. From this can be a little uncomfortable. At school, and then in high school, students are told what to learn and how. In total, for about fifteen years, someone else chooses subjects for them, approaches to learning – even textbooks are written in the curriculum. Andragogy offers students to decide everything themselves – and this is an interesting journey.
What else is important in adult education is to use the experience that they already have mobile cover. It works like this. Do you speak two foreign languages and come to learn the third? Remember how the first two were studied. You already know what you need to do every day, build vocabulary and constantly train your grammar in order to correctly conjugate verbs on the go. It remains to apply this knowledge to the third language.
Finally, priority in adult education is given to self-learning. In foreign universities, students study the lion’s share of the material on their own. In Russia, such a training procedure is used less often – and we will try to understand how to follow it outside the university walls.
Where to begin
With goal setting. Decide exactly what you want to study, determine the criteria for success (when you can assume that you have learned something) and deadlines. The classic SMART model will do: your goal should be concrete, measurable, achievable, relevant and limited in time.
How to study to learn
Make a training plan and include classes in your schedule. In all seriousness, open the calendar and hammer in specific hours of study – and at this time do not do anything else. The strategy “I will learn when I have time” does not work. By following it, you quickly see that there is no time. When a couple of free hours are issued, other things are immediately found – much easier and more familiar than studying. From now on, your goal is to get involved in learning, so that taking a summary was as easy as a telephone.
The path to habit begins with regularity. Need to engage in daily – or at least several times a week. The schedule will help not shirk. Another news: as it turned out, the habit is formed much longer than 21 days. On average – 66, and sometimes longer – up to 8 months, so arm yourself with patience.
Equip a place to practice – so you will help yourself not to be distracted. Gather everything you need where you plan to learn. All these “I will stand behind the handle” completely knock the mood, especially if the handle is one and it still needs to be searched. You should have everything handy – except for the phone. He, on the contrary, should be removed away and put on silent mode. You need to concentrate and not be distracted. The phone does not exactly help with this.
Self-education stunts
Short classes with short breaks are more effective than sitting for hours in school in the style of “I have an exam tomorrow morning.” After exercising for an hour and a half, stop for 5–10 minutes.
Do not even go to messengers and social networks even at the “breaks”. Communication and reading tapes tighten, but the brain and eyes do not rest. Better warm yourself up: do ten squats or a pair of yoga asanas. Physical activity will shift attention and saturate the blood with oxygen – then it will be easier for you to concentrate.
Another trick is to learn a little over the course of the day. In the morning, repeat what you learned yesterday, read a page or two at lunchtime and fully engage in the evening. Regular repetitions develop a habit, do not give out of context and strengthen fresh knowledge.
Almost the most important thing in self-study is not to leave him halfway through. Tell about the achieved results to others – publicity will help to approach the study more necessarily. You will probably produce something: code, design, texts. Make them public. Write the code? Post it regularly on GitHub, even if it doesn’t excite you. Let you do something imperfectly – but it is still better than not doing anything because the ideal is obviously unattainable. If you study design, create an account at Behance and publish the results of your work there. Working option for all – a blog about academic success and failure with examples of everything that you did and did not succeed.
How to deal with materials for training
Consume new information daily. The obvious advice is to read books. If it’s hard to tune in to a big book, start with blogs. Posts are relatively short, focusing on small and specific topics, and blogs are updated regularly.
Make a list of books, articles, and blogs that you are about to read. Keep it up to date.
Switch between topics. Cross-disciplinarity is a distinctive feature of modern education. Interface designer will come in handy with knowledge of color theory, composition laws, as well as Bootstrap, HTML, and CSS, not to mention graphics programs. The developer of Big Data is Java, Hadoop, R, and NoSQL. Assess what areas you need to understand, and study them in turn. To switch to another subject, do not wait until you have enough knowledge of the first. The deeper you understand something, the more knowledge you will consider sufficient. Meet each area little by little, constantly switching between them.
Try different approaches to learning: watch videos, use tutorials, listen to podcasts, take online courses. So you quickly figure out what works for you and what does not. There are 7 learning styles: visual, auditory, verbal, physical, logical, independent and interpersonal. Choose for yourself the most suitable and focus on them.
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