Being a student in this program is like drinking from a firehose. It's going to feel like information is just gushing out of your instructors on a daily basis with no way to control the flow. Since you probably haven't been a student in a while, this article will help prepare you on how to be a sponge and retain as much of that information as possible.
- Describe why becoming a better learner is important.
- Explain how to become a better learner using a three step process.
- Identify a few personal strengths regarding this process.
- Identify at least one personal weakness regarding this process.
Learning is essential to being a programmer. It's a huge field with new technologies and methodologies being discovered every day. Becoming a better learner will prepare you for a long and successful career. Also, we want Galvanize to be a transformative experience for you. In addition to programming skills and knowledge, we want to help grow your habits and mindsets.
At an average college or code school, you'd learn a lot, but you'd probably fall back into the same habits and mindsets you had before you started. Yes, you'd be better off for having gone back to school, but you wouldn't really have been transformed.
With our strong instructional team, teaching techniques, curriculum, and environment, you can learn two to three times as much at Galvanize. But because we operate on habits and mindsets, with the intention of helping you become a better learner, you can continue to grow at an accelerated rate even after the Galvanize program is over. Maybe not as much as when you're in school, but certainly at a much faster rate than when you started.
This difference in learning speed before and after the program is what it means to be transformed and to become a new person.
To become a better learner, we recommend this three step learning process which you can start thinking about and working on today.
- Set the stage
- Play
- Reflect
Time to take out a notebook. When you encounter one of these steps and its sub-steps, write it down. Don't worry, there's not a lot to write so you can still pay attention to the lecture. But it's important that you understand these keywords and share in their meaning.
Also write down anything that resonates with you. Writing it down may help you really understand why it feels so relatable to you.
The first major step to becoming a better learner is to set the stage. This step of the process is about priming your brain to receive new information. Setting the stage consists of three sub-steps.
- Clear the stage
- Clarify the what and the why
- Prioritize process over product
The first part of setting the stage is clearing it. That means you have to get rid of everything in your working memory that's not relevant to the task at hand. We have very limited space in our working memory, just like the memory in a computer. Therefore, if you hope to learn as much as possible and to think as critically as possible, you need to get those things out of your head.
One way to do that, is to write down anything that's on your mind you know you need to do later. Put it in safe, reliable todo list somewhere. Picking up flowers, taking out the trash, whatever else you're thinking about. Toss it all in a journal or in a todo list. That way, your tasks won't bother you while you're trying to learn.
Another key component of clearing the stage is turning off all distractions and notifications. Close out any Chrome tabs that aren't relevant, quit out of Slack, silence your phone, disable Facebook notifications, you name it. Those things take up slots in your working memory and research shows that we only have the capacity to hold about four chunks of information (i.e. concepts) at a time. Every slot that's being taken up by something distracting damages your ability to absorb new information.
If you haven't already done so, take a moment to turn off all the distractions that are around you right now.
The second part of setting the stage is clarifying the what and the why.
The what is your objective, your goal, or whatever you're trying to achieve when you're setting out to learn. In our lessons, your instructors will explicitly say what the objectives are. But when you're off learning on your own, come up with an objective of sorts to help you clarify and distill what you hope to achieve at the end of your session.
The why is the meaning or motivation behind the learning. Being human is to be driven by meaning and narrative. If you can frame something you're about to do in terms that motivate you, your brain will be better primed to retain the information that's presented. No matter the topic, have a clear understanding of why the topic is important, how it'll help, or how it relates to the bigger picture. Your instructors have a responsibility to clarify the why for you as well. So if you're ever unsure about why they're teaching you something, just ask.
The last part of setting the stage is about prioritizing process over product. In other words, defining success as simply spending time doing focused and deliberate practice. This program is going to be very difficult at times. You may not fully understand some of the concepts on the first try. And you may not reach your end goal in the period of time that you set out to do your work. This is perfectly fine so long as you're challenging yourself to get better while in the zone of proximal development.
While in the zone of proximal development, doing focused and deliberate practice while learning and doing will produce far more quality results in the long run. If you flip the prioritization—prioritizing product over process—you're much more likely to take shortcuts, to cheat, or to do something that benefits you in the short term but harms you in the long run. Remember, top performers do what's hard, not what they're good at.
Imagine that a friend came to Galvanize and asked you, "Hey everyone is talking about setting the stage. What does that mean? Why is that important? How do you do that?" Take a few moments to think about what you'd say to your friend. When you've decided what to say, turn and talk to a partner and share your thoughts with them.
So the second major step to becoming a better learner is to play. This word is chosen very carefully as children learn at a much faster rate than adults and neurological research suggests that play has a big part of it. When you think about it, it makes sense too. Children just have different attitudes when it comes to what they're trying learn and why they're doing it.
Like setting the stage, this step of the process consists of three sub-steps as well.
- Wrestle with it
- Take risks
- Have fun!
The first part of play is to take any new information you receive and wrestle with it. In other words, think about it from different perspectives. Never be satisfied with exposing yourself to new information only once. Ask yourself questions about it, dive in, try to learn as much as you can about it.
Pick up an object that's close by, preferably something light and not too expensive. Go ahead, we'll wait.
If you look at this object just once from one angle, then you'll have a very two-dimensional perspective of it. It would be hard to claim that you fully understand it. But if you turn it around and look at it from different angles, smell it, taste it, rub your fingers across it, you gain familiarity and build fluency with it.
This is the goal with everything you'll learn here at Galvanize. To gain familiarity, build fluency, and eventually become intuitive with programming. Just exposing yourself to something once will never be enough. So read about it, write notes about it, write code about it, write blogs about it, talk about it, and listen about it. Do everything you can to perceive new information from as many different angles as possible so it's massaged into your long term memory.
While you're playing, take risks. Be willing to make mistakes. Be willing to do something you don't know how to do yet with the understanding that it may not work out like you intend.
You've probably heard a bunch of common sayings about this already.
- "Fortune favors the bold."
- "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
- "If you never swing the bat, you'll never hit a home run."
When it comes to learning through play, it's the effort, and not the intelligence, that makes the biggest difference. This aligns with the research done around fixed mindset versus growth mindset.
Training your mind with a growth mindset can be very difficult. But the reward for your persistence is being able to drink more and more from the firehose every day. Here are some things you can say to yourself that'll help train your mind to be more growth oriented.
And the last, but equally important part of play is to have fun. If you find your jaw clenched, your shoulders tight, or your breath panicked while you're wrestling and taking risks, you're probably not having much fun. And if you're not having fun, then you're really not playing.
Having fun is not about feeling good either. When the outer cortex of your brain shuts down, we enter into fight, flight, or freeze mode. This often happens when we're afraid to show vulnerability or mistakes. When our outer cortex is shut down, the part that makes us the most human and allows us to think critically is down and we're not in an optimal state for receiving information.
When you find yourself not having fun, take a deep breath, step outside, go for a walk, do whatever you need to do to regain focus on the why. Remember, programming is just about the coolest thing you can do in this world! If that's not how you feel when you're in this program, it's time for a break.
Imagine that same friend from earlier asks you, "Hey, what's this play business all about? Why is that important? How do you do that?" Take a few moments to think about what you'd say to your friend. When you've decided what to say, turn and talk to a partner and share your thoughts with them. Since you've been sitting for a while, feel free to stand up and stretch your legs too.
The third and final major step to becoming a better learner is reflect.
So you've set the stage by clearing out all the distractions, clarifying the what and the why, and prioritizing process over product. And you've spent a good long while in play mode by wrestling with new information, taking risks, and having fun. Whenever the learning period is done, it's time to reflect on what happened.
Like setting the stage and play, this step of the process consists of three sub-steps.
- Self assess
- Ask new questions
- Repeat
The first part of reflection is to self assess by asking yourself the following.
- What were my objectives?
- How far did I get?
- How much is left?
- How was the process?
- Did I set the stage well?
- Did I play well?
- What can I do better next time?
These are some of the most high value questions you can ask yourself. If you can do that for yourself at the end of each day, you'll multiply your ability to learn. This is one of the secrets as to why students who come through Galvanize leave transformed. They learn how to think about their own thought process and provide themselves feedback.
The second part of reflection is to ask yourself new questions about the information you just learned. This is a powerful learning technique that helps you solidify what you know, what you still don't know, and what's most important to learn next. Forming new questions also primes you to start the cycle again by providing the motivation to keep learning. Nothing is better than a really juicy question that you're just dying to solve.
Additionally, by writing down these questions, you can go back and review them at some point down the road. Even if you don't answer them, you'll realize how far you've come based on the questions you were asking yourself earlier in your career. It's a great way to reflect on how much you've grown and the process you've gone through.
The third and final step of reflection is to repeat this whole cycle. As mentioned earlier, learning never stops for programmers as there's always something new to master. The best part about mastering this learning process is that the more you practice it, the faster and easier you'll retain new information.
Picture someone who's struggling with a part of this process, maybe with clearing the stage or taking risks or self assessment. Imagine what it would look like and sound like to watch and hear someone struggling. Take a moment visualize this and then write down your thoughts.
When you're finished, find someone new who you haven't talked with yet and act like this struggling student. Your partner will then pretend to be a doctor by diagnosing the issue and prescribing a concrete step that you can do get healthy again. Once you've been diagnosed and prescribed, switch roles with your partner.
- Bloom's Taxonomy
- Chunking
- Difference between chronic, toxic, and regular stress
- Differentiated instruction
- Flow
- Galvanize Employees and Impostor Syndrome
- Growth Mindset
- Illusion of Competence (Dunning-Kruger Effect)
- Imposter Syndrome
- Learning and Stress
- Process Over Product
- Teach to Learn
- Zone of Proximal Development