Five Principals of Effective Learning

Upword is an AI-powered knowledge tool. We are building an app you can use for your daily research and content workflows. Our AI helps you extract the key takeaways from your content but that alone is not enough. In some cases, you will need to LEARN your content and build your summary. This is why we have Professor Stephen Kosslyn on the team to help us build the learning part as well.

Prof. Stephen Kosslyn, Upword's Learning Advisor, has dedicated his life to the science of learning. He is one of the top experts in learning and cognitive science – and a huge asset for us at Upword. Stephen Kosslyn formulated five principles that underlie effective learning, which we draw on at Upword. Here they are:

1. Deep Processing

Deep processing stems from the idea that increased mental processing associated with one piece of information will lead to higher retention of that information. For example, asking people to pay attention to the meaning of the word, as oppose to how the word sounds, will lead to deeper processing and, ultimately, more effective learning.

Upword's editing tools allow users to be more engaged and process information at a deeper level. We encourage our users to add notes, comments, re-phrase AI-generated notes and add attachments in order to deepen the mental processing of the important parts of the text.

2. Chunking

We are unable to remember too much information at once. But, you can facilitate your learning by organizing the information into about four units, also called chunks. Example: Look at the following sequence of letters for about a second, and see how many you can remember—

➡️ F B I C I A C N N M T V

By organizing this sequence into chunks—

➡️ FBI, CIA, CNN, and MTV

you are far more likely to be able to remember all 12 letters.

Upword's automated notes - the AI notes - create bite size chunks, extracted from the text for easier consumption. Our users can focus on the main thread, ideas, concepts and basically remember more.

3. Building Associations

Associating new information with prior knowledge will enhance learning. This concept is similar to chunking, in that we are taking 12 letters that do no mean anything by themselves, and turning them into meaningful acronyms (e.g., FBI and CNN). These associations are important for the integration of new material into what we already know, causing the information to be held in your memory and easier to retrieve later.

While using Upword to create your summaries, users can take notes and add comments or attachments to log their associations for better retention + save them for life.

4. Dual Coding

Students who learn using auditory, visual, and words tends to learn better. This is because the brain has more than one opportunity to understand and consolidate the information. In addition to texts provided to students, they should try to look at charts, graphs, and diagrams.

Upword has blended an audio tool to get additional auditory coding to enhance the learning experience. In addition, while creating summaries, users can add attachment notes with images, graphs etc. to enrich their summaries.

5. Deliberate Practice

When sitting down to study, it is important to be attentive and concentrated. Learning is improved by focusing on feedback that is provided and using the feedback to correct and update your knowledge.

Upword encourages users to “finalize” their work - creating a full, neat, clean summary document. After utilizing all Upword’s summary creation tools: The AI tools, the editing tools and getting the notes and comments in the right outline - the user can click the “Publish” button in order to documentize their work. This new summary stay in the users library for life, meaning they can re-read it, listen to it and easily share it.

Next time you go to tackle new information, see if you can integrate these five principals to make your learning more effective. Use our helpful features to turn you into a productive and effective learner.

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Source:

_{**(1) deep processing, (2) chunking, (3) building associations, (4) dual coding, and (5) deliberate practice as brought by Stephen Kosslyn in his latest book, Active Learning Online:   https://www.amazon.com/Active-Learning-Online-Principles-Courses/dp/1735810703}

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