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Helping Students Learn How To Learn.
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | McKeachie, Wilbert |
| Copyright Year | 2000 |
| Abstract | This paper discusses how to make students effective, lifelong learners. It describes several ways of learning: reading, listening, observing, talking, and writing. According to the author, five elements are needed to become a good learner: (1) motivation; (2) a knowledge base that provides a conceptual structure for further learning; (3) skills for further learning; (4) strategies for efficient learning; and (5) metacognitive strategies. For each of these elements, the author makes specific recommendations. For motivation, teachers can develop students' intrinsic interest in learning and teach them to evaluate their own learning to assess their work and progress. Much of organized and conceptual knowledge is up to professors to construct, but students can be taught to construct outlines and graphic representations. Skills for learning, such as practice and increasing the meaningfulness of material, can be taught, along with strategies for learning, like paying attention and "clustering" things into groups or categories. Finally, metacognitive strategies, such as planning, self-mnnitnring, and calf regulation, are highly impertant skills that can he taught to students. (CJW) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 1 1 Helping Students Learn How to Learn W.J. McKeachie University of Michigan U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER been reprodu This ced document has r as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. What do students need if they are to become effective life-long learners? First--let's look at the opportunities they may have for learning. What are the possible ways in which adults may learn? Then, let's examine what they need in order to use these opportunities effectively. Finally, how can we help them if they are to become better learners? Those are the three topics I shall try to address in this talk. I. Possible ways of learning Even in this electronic age, reading remains as a major way of learning. We learn from books, newspapers, magazines, professional journals, instructional manuals. Even the World Wide Webb requires reading. Just as important as reading is listening. While postcollege learning will probably involve fewer formal lectures than characterizes most college learning, one still learns a great deal by listening to family members, friends, television and radio programs, supervisors, and fellow workers. A third method of learning is observing. We watch other people and learn from the ways they do things. We not only learn from observations of others but also from observation of our own behavior and its successes and failures. We learn from observing 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE behavior on television and in films. In learning certain skills, such as high jumping, cooking, carpentry, and even mathematics, videotape may be an important instructional device. We also learn by talking and writing. Often hearing or seeing our own thoughts can clarify our thinking, cueing new associations, making gaps clear even to ourselves. But, more important, talking and writing are important ways of getting responses to our ideasresponses that may correct, elaborate, or reinforce our ideas. Questioning, explaining, defending are all important mechanisms of learning and memory. And with the increasing popularity of e-mail and the World Wide Webb, writing is an even more important skill than in previous years. Reading, listening, observing, talking, and writing all involve learnable skills. If we are to help students become effective life-long learners, such skills are among the basic elements needed, but there are elements that are also important; so let's examine what some of them are. II. What is needed to be an effective lifelong learner? Five elements: First, motivation. It does no good to have skills if one isn't motivated to use them. While people learn all the time, there are differences between learning a basketball score and learning something that will be useful at other times and places. Our problem is not that adults don't know how to read, but rather that many don't want to read. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED450864.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
