I recently received an award from the University. My grade point average is between 4.2 and 4.5, which is somewhere between A and A+ (perfect). It's not a great achievement, but I managed to do all this while spending a fraction of the time studying than most people.
This is my learning strategy, by organizing it, I call this learning concept Holistic Learning, which is the process of organizing information to be loaded on the web, so that interconnected ideas are created.
Building Understanding
The learning process is the same as building a house. You will never get a clear picture, if you have never faced a real case. Communication limitations greatly hinder the process of distributing knowledge. On the contrary, you try to listen to the teacher's explanation, read books and make complete notes are forms of effort to understand the subject.
For example, there is a supply of building materials such as bricks, cement and glass, then it is up to you what building you want to make, if it is like this, what attitude will you take? Unfortunately, most learning strategies fall into two basic types:
Memorizing - “Instead of immediately building anything with the available building materials, I stared for a few minutes to record the position of the building materials” (Image).
Formula - “It is like you are blind, then groping to be able to reach the wall of the house” (Image).
There is nothing wrong with either of the above strategies, assuming you do not use either of them. The human brain is not like a computer, it is very limited, so it is impossible to have infinite knowledge without some structure. And formulas will not work if the questions (rules) are designed for a dynamic scope.
Learning Holistic
The best alternative strategy is to focus on the information/knowledge you already have to build something. This requires a clever concept, in order to create something big from a little information/knowledge. Here are some ideas to get you started.
1. Metaphor
It is a quick way to organize simple information by comparing several complex information. If you find a connection or relationship between information, then add an analogy to improve your understanding. As neutrons are likened to string waves.
2. Use All Your Senses
Abstract ideas are hard to memorize, because they are far from our senses. Bringing them closer to our senses, such as combining intuition and images, can help clarify the abstract information. For example, when I was learning matrices, I remembered the pattern by visualizing my hands moving through the numbers, one adding and the other subtracting.
3. Teach him
Find someone who is interested in the topic you are studying but does not yet understand, then teach it to them. This exercise will force you to think of the best way to convey information so that it is easy to understand, so indirectly you are also learning so that you can understand more. For the same result, spending five minutes explaining a concept will save you an hour than if you were to study it yourself.
4. Test Your Mobility
The best way to know that you don't understand 100% is to open your document and explain the subjects in your own words, if you explain without references, then you can be said to have failed to understand.
5. Looking for Patterns
Knowing patterns in information makes it much easier to understand a topic. This can be done if you can and are used to identifying patterns in different topics. For example, the way neutrons burn is similar to the “if” statement in programming languages.
6. Building the Foundation
Reading a lot and having a general knowledge of many topics can give you many things, one of which is the flexibility to find patterns and metaphors in new topics. The more you already know, the easier it is for you to learn.
7. Don't force it
I don't want to spend a lot of time studying before an exam, because it's inefficient. Instead, try to slowly interlink ideas in your brain, so that studying before the exam is just a quick recap and doesn't require much effort.
8. Building a Model
Models are simple concepts that are not necessarily true in themselves, but are useful for visualizing abstract ideas. When I try to work through the concept of subspaces, I imagine a blue background with a red plane passing through it. This representation is not entirely accurate about the facts of subspace, but it creates a picture that can be applied to future ideas.
9. Learning is in the Head
Having beautiful notes and perfect highlight books, it doesn't matter if you don't understand the information in them. Your goal is to understand the information so that it can be useful for assignments, tests and life. Don't be afraid to make a mess when you want to get your ideas on paper and connect them to your head. Use your notes and books as a medium for learning rather than an end result (meaning don't copy notes to get the end result).