[Music] I am talking now to Barbara Oakley, she's a professor of engineering at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, United States and a Distinguished Scholar at McMaster University, Canada. Barb, can you please introduce yourself for our learners? Oh. I'm Barbara Oakley and it's a pleasure to be with you. And you're doing some great work, so we will have some fun speaking about it today. In your MOOC “learning how to learn” and your book “A mind for numbers” you teach us how to learn difficult subjects. For our learners that still are unaware of your fantastic tips, what advices you would give to them? Oh, well, the best advice would be to watch the Massive Open Online Course, because there's lots of information in it, and it's hard to compress it into like just a few seconds but I think one of the most important things is that you can learn way more than you think you can learn. So for example, for me, I grew up absolutely hating math and science so I flunked my way through elementary middle and high school math and science and terrible at them and then I got out into the real world and I joined the army I was a linguist I learned Russian, and when I was 26 and I was getting to leave the military I discovered that suddenly nobody was interested in having me work for them because I didn't have a marketable skill so I decided to try and see if I could change my brain and learn something that involved math and science I didn't really think I could do it and I did! I mean, it's amazing! I'm now a professor of engineering. So, what, this really means is that if you use some of the right learning techniques, you can learn a lot! Nobody is predisposed because they have - or don't have - the math gene or something like that you can, no matter, you may learn some things more slowly than other people but you can still learn it and in fact if you learn more slowly sometimes you can learn it much more solidly, a lot better. So, you're on a great career path and I'm really excited for you in this program. Great! So, do you believe distance education is a feasible way to excel in a new area? Could you share with us your thoughts and tips? Absolutely! I think that online learning is a great new way of learning that expands possibilities for ordinary people - like you and me - that we can learn something new with great teachers and we've never had this kind of opportunity before when I was a young person, I had to go back to the university at age 26 and and give up every aspect of my life every other aspect for like five years to try and retrain my brain to become an engineer. Nowadays, you don't have to make those kinds of horrible sacrifices you can still be raising a family, and have a career and you can be working towards and retraining yourself, using these really good online videos and the real fact of the matter is that half of all professors are below average as teachers except online online you can find some of the world's greatest teaching so you are you're in luck you're in a new world now where online materials - great online materials - are available and you really want to take advantage of it Great. The use of technologies, such as the computer, the smartphone... increase our confidence in doing multiple tasks at the same time. Do you believe we are multitask? Can we study and check the email, the WhatsApp, the Facebook? Can we do multiple things at once? No! don't do that! the reason is because can you look at one thing and then look at another thing and then go back to the first thing? Absolutely you could do that. You can study one thing, and then switch your attention and come back, but every time you do that it is a burden on your working memory it makes things harder for you if you set a period of time, like 25 minutes - this is called the Pomodoro Technique - so turned off everything else, so you have no distractions from your computer or your cell phone or anything like that. That's how you get started doing this Pomodoro Technique and so, no distractions, set a timer for 25 minutes, work, without distraction, for 25 minutes. So if you catch your mind wondering, just bring it back, then keep working. And then when you're done, reward yourself. So, listen to a favorite song, you know, go out do a little dance, talked to friends, go on Facebook... Whatever makes you happy a little bit of reward for five or ten minutes if you work in this fashion while you're working with total focus and then you rest total focus and then you rest you will get so much more done than if you're working on this and then looking at dad and going back and forth which is not an optimal way to work at all if you try this Pomodoro Technique of 25 minutes and then a little relaxing break you'll find that it works wonders for you. It does work. It changed my life, and it was in your learning how to learn course that I got to learn and use this every day in my life. So, thank you, again for this! Your experience of changing from a career in the army and then becoming a professor shows us that those challenges are possible. As you know, our course is about evidence-based healthcare which can be more difficult for people that are not a student or a professional in this area. What would you suggest for our learners that are outsiders, which are more than welcome in our massive online open course? A several things. First, I think it's important for you to realize that the kinds of things that you will be learning in this course could benefit you for the rest of your life, so -and not just you - your family, your parentes, your children, your relatives, because you will be getting insights into healthcare issues that will allow you to make important very good decisions about your health. So, take advantage of this marvelous opportunity, because so often times people will make poor healthcare decisions simply because they haven't gotten good education about related sorts of issues. So, another thing is try to space out your learning so in other words don't sit there go: "Oh, every Saturday I'm going to cram in the whole course". Try and do maybe 20 minutes a day each day something like that. Try to avoid putting everything in one day. But instead, try to do a little bit every day and that will help you to grow those neural structures of learning in a better way. Yeah and, doing the chunks, right?! That's right, that's right. So, great patterns And your final thoughts for your students. I think you're so lucky to be able to have a great instructor and some wonderful insights into into health issues that will benefit you and everyone you know. So, best of luck in this whole learning journey! Okay! That's Barbara Oakley! Thank you very much for your attention and for your nice words and kind attention... And, we see you! Bye bye! Bye bye!
