Learning in Coursera Forums

Assignment for the Course: Learning How to Learn

Carol Fenijn

Version 1
27 January 2015

2015, HiSeCu Carol Fenijn, License: GNU FDL

Table of Contents:

1.INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................3
2.THREE MAIN TOPICS OR THEMES OF THE COURSE................................... 4
2.1THE POMODORO TECHNIQUE................................................................................. 4
2.2CHUNKING......................................................................................................... 7
2.3FOCUSED MODE AND DIFFUSE MODE THINKING........................................................ 8

3.CONCLUSION.............................................................................................9

blz: 2 van 12

1. Introduction
Contributing to forums can help in learning for a course. Active
involvement with the course material, giving explanations but also asking
questions on it, can help in our understanding and remembering.
The forums that were used were of the Coursera Course Learning How to
Learn of January 2015. This course is offered by University of California
San Diego through Coursera and is taught by Dr. Barabara Oakley and Dr.
Terrence Seynovski. The URI of this course is:
http://www.coursera.org/course/learning/
All names of contributors to the forums have been anonymized. People
who have access to the forums can see who actually discussed in the
threads that were mentioned. If you find contributions of participants who
were anonymized brilliant, you can find them in those forums in their
context.
If information in this document is not from the forums, it is based on the
course material itself, as well as the book A Mind For Numbers by Dr.
Barbara Oakley or my own imagination. ;-)

blz: 3 van 12

2. Three Main Topics or Themes of the Course

Three main topics or themes of the course Learning How to Learn will have
extra emphasis in this paper: 1. The Pomodoro Technique, 2. Chunking and 3.
Focused and Diffuse modes of thinking. This does not mean, that other subjects
will not be mentioned, they will only get some less attention in this document.

2.1

The Pomodoro Technique

Description of the Pomodoro Technique

The pomodoro technique involves the use of a timer. The inventor of the
pomodoro technique used a tomato shaped timer, the word 'pomodoro'
means 'tomato' in Italian.
One very important principle is, that we focus on process, not on product.
Thinking of a product we must finish often causes us to procrastinate, simply
working on the task for only 15 to 25 minutes is something we can do without
much difficulty, esp. if we get used to the pomodoro technique.
Combining the use of the pomodoro with other techniques, like the use of a task
list, the principle and eating your frogs first, can have a very strong effect on our
learning habits and productivity.
Use of a Task List

The following is an example of a Task List that one can make for the next
day. If one makes this check list the night before, one can mentally
prepare for the tasks, which will make them easier the next day.
When

Action

Early in the
morning

20 minute
pomodoro

11:00 h
11:30
12:30
...
20:00 h

15 minute
pomodoro
Read book
for one hour
Half hour
break
...
Stop studies

Specifics
Work on assignment 2 of the course
Reward: Cup of coffee, browse a news
site
Use flash cards to learn Spanish
Reward: Cup of coffee, read email
Read study book, using recall to try to
reproduce the content of each chapter
Lunch
...
Stop Time of the Studies

blz: 4 van 12

Eat your Frogs First

Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you
the rest of the day. is a quote that is attributed to Mark Twain.
Starting the day working early for some time on a difficult of boring task can be a
very effective way to increase our productivity.
Forum Question: Please help me make my frogs more tasty. ;-)
URI: https://class.coursera.org/learning-003/forum/thread?thread_id=1912
A nice discussion unfolded after the following question was posed:
"Eat your frogs in the morning" sounds like good advise, but once you are are actually at it, they may not really
be easy to swallow.
Any advise on making my frogs more tasty?
Maybe being satisfied with having worked on a more difficult or challenging task for around 25 minutes, even
when I do not finish it, may be a good strategy, so I only eat one single leg or arm of the frog, or even only one
of its fingers or toes?
Do you have better suggestions on how I can learn to swallow it?

One suggestion that was made is, to serve the frogs in tomato sauce, meaning
that the pomodoro technique can be effectively combined with the principle of
eating frogs early in the morning.
Someone else brings the app he has created for time management and
productivity under the attention. For a while, he names a column in his app
frog, but that was soon changed back.
People clearly have very different points of view, for one forum member, frog
primarily means Fully Rely on God.
Another forum member confirms, that Brian Tracy may be the inventor of the frog
consumption method, although that is as yet an unsettled issue. At any rate the
quote from Mark Twain precedes that. Someone also mentioned the related GTD
(Getting Things Done) approach by David Allen.
Further suggestions that are made is to serve the frog in a JAR, referring to Java,
and interleaving it with salad, which refers to the technique of interleaving.
Learning the word 'pomodoro'

As was very obvious in the various threads of the forums, very many people had
difficulty with the word 'pomodoro'. All sorts of variants with misspellings of the
word were used. That is why the following thread was started:
Forum Question: Do you find it difficult to remember the word "pomodoro"?
Etymology of the word.
URI: https://class.coursera.org/learning-003/forum/thread?thread_id=1907

blz: 5 van 12

Some people may find it difficult to remember the word pomodoro.

Knowing a bit of the etymology of the word may help.
There are at least three possible explanations:

1. pomo d'oro (apple of gold)

2. pomo d'amor ("apple of love")

3. pomo di moro (fruit of the moors)

Sources:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pomodoro
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=pomodoro&searchmode=none
The variant "pomo d'amor" was contributed by a participant of the forum

Someone from Italy noted, that the explanation pomo di moro is not likely, it
was included as some sources did mention it.

blz: 6 van 12

2.2

Chunking

Description of Chunking

Chunking is the learning technique, that allows us to make very efficient

use of the limited amount of slots, around four, of our working memory.
If we chunk important concepts, procedures, actions, etc. we can make
excellent use of both our long term memory, and our working memory.
People in the forums clearly have difficulty grasping the concept of
chunking.
Thread Question: Help me, in one word what is chunk for you?
URI: https://class.coursera.org/learning-003/forum/thread?thread_id=2898
This question was raised by a peer.
First I tried to give a somewhat abstract explanation:
Literally describing in one word what a chunk is, is not easy. The one word that I think would come closest to it, is the
word "concept" or "routine", but I doubt that that will make the concept clearer to you, Joceir.
So I shall try to paraphrase what I find in Dr. Oakley's book "A Mind for Numbers", part is from recollection so it may be
wrong:
A chunk is a collection of bits of information that are bound together through meaning, corresponding to a neural
pattern, a set of neurons that fire off together in a human's brains approximately at the same time.
As the neurons that form part of the neural pattern fire off simultaneously, they only need to occupy one single slot in
working memory.
Maybe it is easier if some examples of chunks are presented. They can be found in the course material.

Then someone indicated that it may be clearer with an example, which I

gave:
Maybe the following illustration clarifies it a bit, the one with the puzzle of a car, and arrows at those sets of puzzle
pieces that are chunks:
https://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/learning/Pdfs/2-3_How_to_form_a_chunk.pdf
If you have a puzzle, it helps to have lots of chunks of pieces of the puzzle which are in themselves meaningful, that
can help you solve the whole puzzle!
All the individual pieces of the puzzle may not make any sense, but chunks of them do!

Related Techniques

Mostly, we must make a serious effort to understand the material we want

to chunk, that is how neural connections that are necessary for the chunks
are formed in the best way.
However, besides that we often also need to learn quite some facts that
can also help in the chunking process. They could be seen as single pieces
of the puzzle, or even parts of puzzle pieces.
That is why memory learning techniques are also useful in addition to the
process of chunking itself. These are often called mnemotechnics. One of

blz: 7 van 12

the memory techniques that was presented in this course was the Memory
Palace technique, which is also known as the Technique of Loci.
Forum Question: How use the Memory Palace technique to learn abstract
concepts?
URI: https://class.coursera.org/learning-003/forum/thread?thread_id=3758

This question was from a peer. The question was, how abstract concepts can be learned with the
Memory Palace technique. A specific example of concepts: CHUNKING, RECALLING, TRANSTERING,
INTERLEAVING, SELF TESTING, USING FLASH CARDS, MINIMIZE HIGHLIGHTING, LEARNING FROM
MISTAKES, DELIBERATE PRACTICE, AVOID "EINSTELLUNG", REPETITION

The reply in the forum:

That is a good question! What can help in such cases, is to use associations/mappings from abstract
concepts to very concrete concepts of which it is easier to make pictures. Very much of mnemotechnics
is based on associations/mappings.
I shall try to apply that to your example.
CHUNKING -> Chipmunk
RECALLING -> Calling again - telephone
TRANSFER -> Ride from the airport to a hotel - taxi
INTERLEAVING -> Looking through a pile of papers - sheets of paper which are being interleaved
SELF TESTING -> Check own clothes looking for note with phone number - clothes
USING FLASH CARDS -> Flash cards
MINIMIZE HIGHLIGHTING -> highlighter
LEARNING FROM MISTAKES -> Lessons learned written down on the back side of the paper
DELIBERATE PRACTICE -> act of jumping
AVOID "EINSTELLUNG" -> Jumping over a road block or walking around it
SPACED REPETITION -> repeating jumping over a road block, but taking much time for that
So now I try to make a picture with these concrete concepts:
Chip and Dale have just arrived at the airport that is closest to your home. They arrived at a place that
you have arrived at before, which you can picture very clearly. Being chipmunks they have booked a
nice hole in the biggest tree next to the most famous hotel in the center of the city where you live. Of
course, they want a transfer to that tree. Dale is not so smart, he immediately grabs his mobile
phone and starts calling a number with his mobile phone, and does it again and again, when Chip tells
him to stop and look for the right phone number of a taxi company first. He checks the pockets of his
own clothes for to prepare for their journey, he had written down a lot of information on paper with
notes. In fact, because he was in a hurry, he used flash cards that were lying on the table, he wrote
taxi on one side of a card and the phone number of the taxi company on the other side. Now Dale is
acting a bit irrationally. He takes a highligher and wants to highlight the front side of every flash card
that Chip has. Of course, Chip tells him again to stop what he is doing, and he takes the highlighter and
throws it in the dust bin. He explains to Dale that highlighting too much, especially relying on
highlighting, is not useful at all, and lets him write the word "mistakes" on one side of one of the flash
cards and the lesson that he learned on the back side of that card. Then, Dale does something quite
intelligent! He takes the cards and starts interleaving them. Chip tells him he is being very creative,
interleaving the cards, as that makes him find the phone number more quickly, he can see each of the
cards very clearly while the cards are being interleaved. After chip found the right flash card with the
phone number of the taxi company, they get a ride to the tree in which they had booked a hole. In front
of that tree, there is a big road block. Dale wants to just walk around that road block, but Chip thinks it
is better to train his muscles and deliberately practice jumping, so he jumps right over the road
block. In fact, he does that six times, waiting for ten minutes before he jumps again. When he
has finished his physical exercise, he joins Dale in the hole of the tree, where Dale has been relaxing
and eating chest nuts during the last hour.
Of course, this is one of an infinite amount of pictures that could be made with the abstract concepts.
You can use a picture that works best for you! This is just an example.
Does this make sense?

Intelligence and Learning

blz: 8 van 12

One thing that is very clear in this course is, that the role of intelligence in
learning is very limited. In fact, people with more intelligence may have
less creativity, as many tasks come a lot easier to them.
Thread Title: Not being smart
https://class.coursera.org/learning-003/forum/thread?thread_id=463
The thread is started with the following posting:
It is great to know, that being smart is not the main factor for success, but that passion and persistence are far more
important factors.
Very many people I know could be quite good at various fields of study, but they just never try, or never had the
chance for that.

Most people in this thread and related threads agree, that passion,
perseverance, persistence, a lucky strike, hard work, discipline etc. are just
as important as intelligence, or probably even more important.
Someone quotes Edison: "Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine
per cent perspiration"

blz: 9 van 12

2.3

Focused Mode and Diffuse Mode Thinking

We can either be in focused mode or in diffuse mode.

Logical deduction is an example of focused mode thinkingStrongly
focusing on a problem trying to solve it is another example
Focused mode thinking is GOOD, it is an essential part of our learning.
We actually need to use our working memory in our learning efforts.
Only using focused mode thinking is BAD, it is important to also use
diffuse mode thinking and to rest and have fun in between the scenes.
Many people keep trying to solve mathematics related problems for hours
in a row, and that is not a good idea.
It is very useful to learn how to switch to diffuse mode. The following are
examples of diffuse mode thinking circumstances:
Day dreaming, e.g. while you are eating a banana
Taking a nap
Sleeping
Jogging
Biking
Watching birds or other animals
Etc. etc. etc.
Often, when we have taken a break, taken a nap or slept during
the night, problems that we had before are suddenly solved
during our diffuse mode thinking.
In the course, an analogy is made between two pinball
machines that represent our brains. A pinball machine with just
few bumpers represents the brain in diffuse mode, a pinball

blz: 10 van 12

machine with a lot of bumpers close to each other represents

the brain in focused mode.
Certain problems simply cannot be solved when we are only in
focused mode. We need to be able to make leaps in our mind,
to reach chunks that are farther away, which can help solve
those problems.

blz: 11 van 12

3. Conclusion
Participating in Coursera Forums is very useful, for one deals with the subject
matter of a course in a very active way.
Not only difficult questions can be raised and answered, tough material can be
dealt with, but one can also learn together in a relaxed way, often with much
humor.
Of course, only participating in forums of a course will never suffice. We should
watch the course videos, read material, make assignments, quizzes, etc.
Everyone who reads this article and who has not followed the Coursera Course
Learning How To Learn yet, is hereby encouraged to do so! If parts of this article
are not clear to you, you will find the answers there!
Good luck in your learning journey!

blz: 12 van 12