College Learning : WAYS & WHYS

Frank A. Logan

General Conclusions


The purpose of this chapter is to highlight some of the learning tactics and strategies described in previous chapters and to add a few generalizations.
	Nobody has to learn how to learn.   Simple forms of learning are 
automatic and may even begin in the womb.  Every normal person is born 
learning, and mentally active people die learning.  "To be living," is 
nearly synonymous with "to be learning," and the evidence suggests that 
when one stops learning, one's mind starts dying.  Yet nobody learns 
nearly as much as one could.

	Some learning requires mental effort.  You can listen passively 
and learn to recognize and perhaps to enjoy a Mozart concerto.  But if you 
want to understand musical composition, you need to study that subject by 
attending lectures and reading books.  To become an expert requires years 
of study.  The result may not be that you enjoy Mozart more, but you would 
certainly appreciate him more.  College learning is a form of verbal 
learning that requires a lot of mental effort.

	The more you learn about a subject, the easier it gets to learn 
more about it.  In part this is because knowledge is cumulative, with old 
learning providing a framework on which to add new information. Learning 
also gets easier because we learn how to learn.  For example when you 
study a foreign language,  you not only learn the meaning of foreign 
words, you also learn something about how to study vocabulary lists.  If 
you learn that "mesa" in Spanish means "table" in English by repeatedly 
saying "mesa-table, mesa-table...," you are learning to learn foreign 
words by the method of rote repetition.  Your skill in using that method 
may improve the more you practice it, and you are likely to use that same 
method when learning other foreign words.     

	There are usually several ways to learn verbal material.  You 
couldn't even get to college without having learned some of the successful 
ways to learn.  Because the ways you have learned how to learn work, you 
are not likely to try out other ways unless you make a deliberate 
commitment to do so.   And even if the other ways are better,  they 
usually require more than just token practice.  Faced with the practical 
realities of classes and exams, most students quickly revert to their 
"tried and true" ways.  That is as it should be.   This workbook will have 
achieved its purpose if it has raised your awareness of the fact that the 
way you learn verbal material is itself learned, and is therefore subject 
to new learning as opportunities arise. 

	Return to the rote repetition method of learning mesa-table.  You 
should now know that such rehearsal does not build a very strong reverse 
association from table to mesa.  You should now know to make cards with 
English on one side and Spanish on the other.  Not only can you use such 
cards in both directions, you can rehearse them at times that would 
otherwise be wasted.  You should now know that cards require you to 
practice the test response, namely recalling the answer from memory.  You 
should now know that learning tends to dissipate over time, so you must 
review the words that you have learned from time to time.  You should now 
know that knowledge is non-verbal, so you need to associate mesa with an 
image/idea/thought of a table, not with the English word table.  In doing 
so, you should now know how to use imagery in such learning, for example, 
by imagining a messy-looking table.  In sum, even if you revert to rote 
repetition when faced with a last-minute effort to learn, you should know 
that there are other, more effective ways.

Why college?

	When I ask freshmen why they are in college, the most common 
answers are, "My folks wanted me to go," and "It just seemed like the 
thing to do."  Anyway, it beats getting a job.  Some freshmen have 
definite career goals, but most are undecided.  The result is apathy, 
often leading to poor performance, failure, and dropping out. 

	Whatever your reason for being in college, the first imperative is 
to take it seriously.  If you are the traditional college freshman right 
out of high school, you probably have many other things on your mind 
besides academics.  Non-traditional students going to college after 
several years of non-academic pursuits have a real advantage.  They tend 
to be more mature, more self-confident, more committed to success.  
Whichever, don't short-change yourself.  As long as you are in college, 
resolve to do your very best.  The stakes are too high to treat it as a 
game where you win some and lose some.

	The day I graduated from high school, my aunt, who was a college 
professor, said to me: "You'll never feel as smart as you do today."  How 
right she was!  The more I have learned, the more I have become aware of 
how little I know.  I think that the most unique feature of a college 
education is that it can open one's mind to the infinite reaches of 
knowledge that are known or waiting to be discovered.  In the early grades 
of education, each topic was finite.  You learned the alphabet, and once 
you knew it, that was that.  You learned the multiplication facts, and 
once you learned them, that was that.  Even in high school, if you studied 
Shakespeare, it seemed as if you learned  
all there was no know  about his work.  Each subject had a beginning and 
an end.     

	In college, every subject you study should begin to reveal an 
endless domain of knowledge.  Your professors have spent many years 
studying their subjects, and they are at best experts in only a small 
aspect of their fields.  The greatest value of college education is not in 
the actual content of what you learn.   A college education prepares you 
for a lifetime of continuing education.  It is not an education that you 
can "use" in the sense of technical and vocational skills.  It is an 
education you can use to achieve a quality of life that goes beyond the 
necessities of life.       

	Coping with college life.  Everyone has problems from time to 
time.  If you are a "traditional" college student, by which I mean a 
person in the 18-22 age range coming directly from high school, college 
comes at a pivotal time of your life.  It is a time of striving for 
maturity, independence, identity.  If you are a non-traditional student, 
the problems associated with late adolescence are replaced by others that 
are appropriate to your status.  Whichever, your first challenge is to 
resolve your personal problems or to insulate yourself from them enough to 
attend to your studies.

	The key to successful coping with college life is self-discipline.  
If you completed the time-management schedule given in Appendix A, you 
know that there is time to do everything but not much left over to waste. 
One component of that schedule is attending class, and some students infer 
from the fact that college courses are based on the mastery concept that 
class attendance is optional.   In one sense, it is.  If you can manage to 
pass a course while cutting many classes, perfect attendance is not 
necessary.  But you can not learn a subject as well if you skip classes, 
and you are also developing bad disciplinary habits.  After all, going to 
class is a major part of your "job" as a college student.  Even if you are 
paying full tuition, you are paying only a fraction of the cost of 
maintaining the institution.  Good discipline implies good attendance.

	If you have not already developed good self-discipline habits, it 
is imperative that you do so as quickly as possible.  The best technique 
for acquiring self-discipline is called "contingency management."  The 
essence of this technique is to list the various things that you need to 
do, and also the things you want to do, and arrange them in an order from 
the least to the most enjoyable.  Then, working around your fixed 
commitments such as attending class, start doing them in that 
order...hardest to easiest, least liked to most liked.  Along the way, 
include plenty of self-reinforcers.  Whenever you complete a task, be it 
attending class or doing a homework assignment, take time to do something 
you really like.  "Managing" the contingencies means to reward yourself 
for doing the things that need to be done.

	In developing self-discipline, I urge that you NOT attempt to use 
self-punishment when you do what you shouldn't do, or fail to do what you 
should do. It is certainly appropriate to withhold rewards that you might 
have enjoyed, but do not inflict pain or discomfort on yourself for 
misbehavior.  It is well beyond the scope of this book to explain the 
effects of aversive punishment, but you are likely to do more harm than 
good with self-punishment.  If you concentrate on rewarding  yourself  for 
doing what is right, such behavior will prevail without trying to punish 
yourself for doing what is wrong.

	Creatures of Habit.  Whatever we do in any situation is what we 
are most likely to do the next time we are in that situation.  As this 
happens repeatedly, the behavior becomes more and more habitual.  This is 
fine if the behavior is optimally adaptive.  For example, the habit of 
arising at an early hour in the morning is great.  Many other habits are 
desirable because that way of doing something is just as good as any 
alternative.  For example, it really doesn't make any difference which leg 
you put in your pants first.  Being a creature of habit has many 
advantages in coping with everyday life.

	However, sometimes our well-established habits are not optimal and 
it is good practice to try out new alternatives from time to time.  For 
example, I recall resisting shifting to an electric typewriter because I 
felt I was so proficient with a manual machine.  Then, after become adept 
with an electric typewriter, I was reluctant to shift to a word processor.  
Each shift required some period of adjustment, but the ultimate advantages 
are enormous.  As I now recall writing my first book on a manual 
typewriter, with erasers and carbon paper, I am amazed that it ever got 
written.  Hence, just because your old way of doing something works 
doesn't mean it is the best way.

	In this book, I have focused on old versus new ways of learning.  
But the point I am making applies more generally than that.  We are all 
creatures of
habit and undoubtedly miss out on many ways that we could improve our 
lives were we only to explore new and different ways  of doing  routine 
things.   I urge you to keep your mind open to new solutions to old 
problems.  I can almost guarantee that there is now, or will someday be, a 
better way to do virtually
everything that you now do habitually.     

Primacy.  

	College learning often involves new information that is 
counter-intuitive or contrary to what you believed before.  This conflict 
between old and new ideas tends to have one of three consequences.  First, 
there is a tendency to distort the new ideas in such a way as to make them 
somehow fit with the old
ideas.  This consequence is that you never really understand the new idea.  
Alternatively, your mind may simply reject the new idea and you never 
really learn it at all.  Finally, you may succeed in learning the new 
idea, but it is easily forgotten and your memory reverts to the old idea.  
None of these consequences is conducive to success in college.
    
	Unfortunately, there is no foolproof antidote to the primacy 
principle.  Early learning is extremely resistant to change.  But if you 
are aware of that fact, you can take precautions to minimize its effect.  
Whenever you realize that something is contrary to what you thought 
before, make extra effort to see how the ideas are different.  Realize 
that you may not fully understand the new idea yet.  Then try to keep the 
ideas separate.  Eventually, as more and more new ideas come along, you 
will have that "aha" experience of finally getting the point.  But you 
will always have to be ready to recognize your old ideas when they recur.  

The Wandering Mind.  

	Paying attention is the most critical skill for college learning.  
Assuming that you have an adequate vocabulary to understand what you are 
hearing or reading, attending to the words and processing the information 
they convey is the essence of verbal learning.  Doing so is hard mental 
work, and we are all afflicted with the tendency for our minds to wander 
to easier, more pleasant thoughts.  It is therefore important to learn to 
recognize when you are paying attention and when your mind is wandering.

	The tendency for a student's mind to wander off from academic 
subjects is largely a result of word associations.  As I like to put it, 
your mind has a
mind of its own...namely, that part of your mind that is unconscious.  It 
seems that your unconscious is always alert for any word that may occur in 
a book or
a lecture that is in some way associated with any non(tm)academic topic 
that may be troubling you.  If you are concerned about money, health, sex, 
loneliness, inter(tm)personal relations, etc., your unconscious keeps 
trying to bring these to the fore.  Unless you are alert to the 
temptation, your mind can easily wander from physics to your love life.

	There is no cure for your mind's wanderlust.  It may help if you 
set aside some time in your daily schedule to think about your troubles.  
By satisfying the need to worry, to reminisce, to daydream at other times, 
you can better resist those thoughts when you are studying.  Otherwise, 
the best you can do is to learn to recognize when your mind starts to 
wander so you can bring it back on course.

Overshadowing.  

	Whenever a person is exposed to several things at the same time, 
s/he may not learn about all of them.  If one aspect is more noticeable, 
more  familiar,  or more interesting  than some  other aspect, it may 
capture most of one's attention and therefore most of what one learns.  
Everyone remembers best the unusual sight, the dramatic climax, the 
unexpected happening.  Routine events are "overshadowed" by more 
conspicuous ones.

	Overshadowing is important to the college student because the 
important information that you must learn is often overshadowed by its 
context.  One common example is a professor who tells lots of jokes in 
class.  Many students remember the jokes, but do not remember the 
professor's points in telling the jokes.  Another example is a textbook 
(such as this one) that includes many familiar illustrations of the main 
ideas.  It is easy to remember the illustrations but fail to learn the 
main ideas.  You must be alert not to let jokes and illustrations distract 
you from attending to the really important material.

	Let me give an analogy.  Most football fans keep their eyes on the 
ball, following the exciting aspects of the play.  However, if you want to 
be a student of the game of football, you will quickly learn that most 
games are won or lost by the less spectacular action on the front line.  
In similar fashion, you may enjoy the jokes and the illustrations in a 
college course but you must learn to keep your attention focused on the 
basic ideas being presented.

	For learning's sake.  Some people say they want to climb a 
mountain "because it is there."  That is the ideal attitude to take toward 
learning:  Develop a desire to learn because knowledge is there to be 
learned.  Even if a course is a required part of a degree program, try to 
approach it because of its
intrinsic interest.  Learning is easier and better if it is done for the 
sake of learning rather than to satisfy some requirement.  
 
	The human brain is surely the most marvelous thing in the world.  
Its most marvelous feature is the capacity to learn.  Nothing else in the 
whole universe (except intelligent life on another planet) can acquire 
knowledge from experience.  Another of its marvelous features is the fact 
that millions 
of brain cells die every day of our lives, but the remaining cells are 
able to carry on without any significant loss of brain power.  For them to 
do so, however, one must remain mentally active.  Increasingly, the 
evidence shows that you are most likely to "lose your mind" through 
disuse.  The most valuable 
advice I can give you, or that you can give those you love, is this:  
Never stop learning.  The expression, "use it of lose it," applies more to 
the mind than to the body! 



POSTSCRIPT:  Appendix J (Science and Behavior) and
Appendix K (Statistics) are not directly on the topics
of learning and memory.  However, they provide some
relevant background for courses in the behavior
sciences and hence should be a part of your general
preparation for college.  I therefore recommend that
you study them whenever time permits.  
     I also urge you to take the open-book final exam. 
In doing so, remember the importance of being correct
lest you learn your errors.  If you are not sure of
an answer, go back to the text and check yourself. 
The value of this book to you is dependent on how much
you have learned of its contents.