Learning by doing is 💎
Learning is a process in itself.
I was in a very interesting conversation with my friend group where one of my friends was learning a concept for more than a year now, but never truly worked on that. Most people just learn things but almost leave out the fact that :
One learns a skill by doing or performing that skill in regular basis, not by just learning
What is it?
Learning by doing is the idea that we learn more when we actually “do” the activity
Imagine a medical practitioner just learning about theoretical knowledge ( which is surely highly important ), but never actually holding that surgery knife and performing the very same knowledge she studied. Or just learning to write is by actually starting to write that 1st article, not just by reading Top 10 methods to write an article.
Same goes with everything.
John Dewry, an American philosopher who popularized this method. Dewey became famous by arguing that we learn best when we deeply engage with the material. He believed that the best way to achieve that was to create a practical curriculum that had relevance to students’ lives and experiences. Dewey’s insight, already nearing a century old, is freshly becoming relevant again today as modern researchers empirically show the importance of learning by doing.
When does it work?
This works when we have set an initial basic groundwork before starting with the learning while doing phase.
Recent research shows that learning by doing works when it comes at the right point in the learning process.
Learning is a process which expands on itself, and if we start the learning while doing phase too early, our mind will get overwhelmed most likely and we won’t learn.
Take for instance, the first time you rode a bicycle. The initial groundwork here was first to understand how the bicycle is working i.e.. what is the relevance of the parts they have provided. Without which you might not be able to understand the working. Next you have to enter a phase where you have learned about balancing which will only come if you ride the bike actively. Without the basic knowledge of the thing you are about to learn might leave you overwhelmed and you just won’t go back to learning the same thing.
To learn any topic we need to break down the knowledge and topics into digestible parts and expertise on bits and pieces of mastery. If learning while doing comes too early then we can’t learn as our mind is yet to divide the understanding of bits and chunks of the topic.
Why does it work?
Generation effect or testing effect is always an effective technique to facilitate learning while doing. Once you start learning while doing you can constantly ask yourself why you are reading this? What is it about? What is the point the author is trying to make?
By questioning yourself repeatedly it draws your focus your attention on the substance of the material and guides you into the learning by doing technique.
Active engagement and techniques which forces you to work harder to remember the material are the most effective ways to learn.
How to incorporate this?
Research shows that retrieving information repeatedly improves understanding, which increases recall and promotes the “transfer” of knowledge to new settings. When we make learning a matter of doing, an active and effortful process it grows within us.
Psychologist Rich Mayer suggests and has repeatedly shown that we gain expertise by actively producing what we know and learn. He said: “Learning is a generative activity.”
Mayer gives a good description of what we need to do in order to follow this - First, we select information and decide exactly what we’re going to learn. Then we integrate that information into what we know by creating some type of mental connection between current knowledge and the information we hope to learn. In today's digital world the most effective is to produce content on what we are learning. Most people don’t promote what they study and I think there can be the most learning here, as we will be doing the same thing most of us use to do to teach any concept to ourselves. We use it to learn a concept, and we use it to explain the concept to ourselves or to others. This makes the concept clearer and ingrained in our brain.
One more method to retain a lot more knowledge is when we push ourselves to dream up or have a mental image of what we are reading or listening to. Imagining the texts and speeches like an “imaginary mind movie” makes the learnings more sustaining and strong.