Thoughts on Learning and Teaching

Often times, students, especially undergraduate students, learn for tests, which means that the students learn to do well on a test, with the goal of getting a good grade for a career in industry or getting into graduate schools. In order to achieve this goal, students often learn for tests without giving much thinking to the knowledge itself (e.g. how the knowledge is derived). The problems with this type of learning are that the knowledge often does not retain well and, more importantly, students only “learn” about the “facts” while usually the derivative process and the application of knowledge is more important than knowledge itself in education.

As an education enthusiast and a mentor for undergraduate students, I often think, given that the goal of students earning a better grade is not going to change, how can we more efficiently teach not only the facts, but also the thoughts behind. Ultimately, successful education does not just give rise to high graders who know theories in an ideal world, but also critical thinkers who are capable of identifying problems and independently solve problems in real life. Throughout the years, I have been keeping track of the approaches I learn myself, through which I found several aspects that are essential, in my opinion, to successful learning and education.

1. Keep the big picture clear: always introduce any new concept in a big picture and, when going deeper in knowledge, keep connecting back to the big picture
2. Clear interpretation of results: always give explanation to and/or ask for explanation of the results/thoughts from students, regardless of correctness
3. Encourage writing and speaking: both ways can make students reflect on what they know, which help them strengthen the understanding of knowledge, while the structure of writing gives the students opportunity to think thoroughly through a question, describe a problem (what, why) and give an answer (how).
4. Encourage questions and give direction to answers: let students come up with the solutions themselves

Afterall, a huge part of human learning is through experience. In a classroom or any mentoring settings, chances should be given to students to gain experience and learn from their experience. Students should be given examples from teachers to learn how to think and then be given chances to practice active thinking.