This presentation was designed to let friends, family and colleagues know what I got out of a MOOC called "Learning how to learn" taken on Coursera in October / November 2014.
I would highly recommend this course.
As it was designed as a personal not professional presentation it is not referenced in the presentation but there are references and useful readings at the end.

I'll talk more about zombies and procrastination but the images used in the course of habits as zombies and little metabolic "vampire bats" with straws sucking out memories really bought home to me the use of visual images to make ideas "stick".

I found this a great help for list type information. The idea of walking around work in my head putting bacon in the bathroom, and lettuce in the photocopier really made a difference.
Not quite yet so successful for work lists such as components of freestyle teaching maybe as the 'palace' I am using is not as familiar to me.

I use metaphor a lot in my work trying to explain difficult concepts of movement / pain etc to children. I think it is great for simplifying concepts and also allowing them to hook on to already known information.

I think this slide says it all. If you can think of a story that tells what you want to learn the narrative makes it so much easier to recall. Most health professionals use narratives when trying to understand patient complaints / conditions.
Storytelling, metaphor and visualisation work so well together I think because they often tap into different parts of the same system. (Anyone gone to see a movie of a book and been really disappointed because the character doesn't look right?)

This is something that I have been interested in for awhile in relation to movement learning with my background as a physiotherapist. I had not expanded that to the idea of deliberate practice in academic or knowledge learning.
Deliberate practice says that once people get good "enough" then more pure repetition does not improve performance.

Deliberate practice can be done individually or with mentor or coach. Feedback is often easier to get with mentor but use of self testing can provide this if no mentor available.
As deliberate practice requires students to push for a higher level of performance it is usually effortful and best done in short periods with a set time limit. The pomodoro technique is ideal!

Once again found this image on haiku deck and I think it says it all!

This is probably the hardest thing for me. I tend to have a number of demands and it all just feels too hard. The course, as well as work I have been doing with mindfulness techniques and acceptance and commitment therapy ACT, is really starting to make a difference. I'm getting more done with less stress.

When thinking about something that you have to do that you don't particularly like the brain can light up in the same areas that represent physical pain. I knew this from chronic pain literature (particularly D Butler and L Moseley) but hadn't thought about its impact on procrastination. I loved Fiore's image of burning bridges to convey the idea that only when external pain (e.g. Threat of failing) exceeds internal pain does activity begin in procrastinators.

The pomodoro technique was developed by F. Cirillo and used a tomato shaped timer to break down work into intervals and short breaks.
This works for procrastination as working for a specific time does not "fire up" pain centres like thinking about a concrete output does. Learning how to learn calls this - process not product.
It also works to replace the short term reward of avoidance with other rewards PLUS the reward of achievement.
Once again this fit in well with mindfulness and ACT that I have been doing - choose to do something towards a valued goal even if I feel uncomfortable in the moment.

Another reason procrastination happens is due to mindless habits. The image of Zombies was used in the course which I like.
Habits occur in response to 4 factors:
1. A cue (you go onto the Internet to look up a reference)
2. A routine (when you go onto the Internet you check your email, and respond, and maybe do a little browsing etc)
3. A reward (you get to chat to your friends instead of writing your article)
4. A belief (I'm not good at writing or I'll fail this assignment anyway so it doesn't matter how hard I work.
Once again I find this links in with the ACT I have been doing particularly around noticing thoughts and beliefs.
I have found it useful to reduce cues, accept that I can WANT to do something but not do it and finally that my beliefs are not ME.

I have done to do lists and goal lists and all sorts of lists for a while and they were only successful in the short term.
The course suggested doing them at night to allow subconscious to work and this has been much more successful.
It's amazing how one little thing can make a difference.

Really useful for general learning not just mathematics.

Beilock S, (Nov 2012) When Math Hurts: Anticipating doing math sends math-anxious folks into a panic. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/choke/201211/when-math-hurts

Ericsson KA, Krampe RT & Tesch-Romer C (1993) The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance Psychological Review 100(3): 363-406

Fiore, Neil A. (2007) The Now Habit. NY: Penguin,.

Foer, J. (2011) Moonwalking with Einstein. NY: Penguin,

Maguire, E. A., Gadian, D. G., Johnsrude, I. S., Good, C. D., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R. S., & Frith, C. D. (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(8), 4398-4403.

Maguire, E.A., E.R. Valentine, J.M. Wilding, and N. Kapur. (2003) Routes to Remembering: The Brains Behind Superior Memory. Nature Neuroscience 6(1): 90-95.

Michinov N, Brunot S, Le Bohec O, Juhel J & Delaval M (2011) Procrastination, participation, and performance in online learning environments Computers and Education 56: 243-252

Morris, P. E., Fritz, C. O., Jackson, L., Nichol, E. & Roberts, E. (2005), Strategies for learning proper names: expanding retrieval practice, meaning and imagery. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19: 779–798.

Moulart V, Verwijnen MGM, Rikers R & Scherpbier AJJA (2004) The effects of deliberate practice in undergraduate medical education Medical Education 38: 1044-1052

Plant EA, Ericsson KA, Hill l & Asberg K (2005) Why study time does not predict grade point average across college students: implications of deliberate practice for academic performance Contemporary Educational Psychology 30:96-116

Scullin, M. K., & McDaniel, M. A. (2010). Remembering to execute a goal sleep on it!. Psychological Science, 21(7), 1028-1035.

Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: a meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological bulletin, 133(1), 65.

Tice, D. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1997). Longitudinal study of procrastination, performance, stress, and health: The costs and benefits of dawdling. Psychological science, 454-458.


van Gog T, Ericsson KA, Rikers RMJP & Paas F (2005) Instructional design for advanced learners: Establishing connections between the theoretical frameworks of cognitive load and deliberate practice Educational Technology Research & Development 53(3): 73-81