7.1 Learning & Knowing Yourself

Getting Ready to Learn

Welcome to one of the most empowering chapters in this resource! While each chapter focuses on showing you clear paths to success as a student, this one deals specifically with what is at the core of being a student: the act of learning.

Learning is a Process

It is important to recognize that learning is work. Sometimes it is easy and sometimes it is difficult, but there is always work involved.

For many years people made the error of assuming that learning was a passive activity and was a lot like copying and pasting words in a document; the student’s mind was blank and ready for an instructor to teach them facts that they could quickly take in.

But learning is an actual process that physically changes our brains. Even something as simple as learning the meaning of a new word requires the physical alteration of neurons and the creation of new paths to receptors. These new electrochemical pathways are formed and strengthened as we apply, practice, or remember what we have learned.

In addition to the physical transformation that takes place during learning, there are also a number of other factors that can influence how easy or how difficult learning something can be.  Knowing a thing or two about learning and how we learn in general can have strong, positive results for your own learning. This is called metacognition (i.e., thinking about thinking).

“2.0 Introduction” from Fanshawe SOAR by Kristen Cavanagh is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.