Learning to Learn;
or perfecting your learning style for medical school:

 

It will not come as a surprise to serious students that the process of learning itself must be learned.  However, after years of formal schooling, many students enter higher education and graduate programs without having mastered these fundamental skills.  When you begin professional programs and are propelled into a more active learner mode, understanding of these fundamentals becomes vital.  People learn how to learn through many avenues, such as modeling, curiosity, and situational need.  The outline provided on these pages is intended as a way to help you understand the process of your learning.

The ideal learner:

• possesses a high motivation to learn

• has the ability to learn

• has the ability to retain and retrieve knowledge

• possesses a fair amount of self knowledge

• possesses a foundation of knowledge necessary for understanding new material

• possesses cognitive strategies for learning; such as: problem solving skills; concept acquisition skills; and discrimination learning skills.  (O’Neil, 1979, pp.46-47)

Everyone uses an array of learning styles and skills that are the preferred way to take in and process new information.  Learning style includes the specific and personal learning skills of reading, listening, writing, coding; and the learning processes of reflection, trail and error, or repetition.    

Adapted from UNM Organizational Learning & Instructional Technologies course Learning to Learn: Patricia Boverie, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Educational Leadership & Organizational Learning, 1997.

Fundamentals of the learning how to learn process:

This is a continuous--lifelong--endeavor involving change and the usual accompanying fear of change.  It can be a frustrating experience, yet when the next time a similar learning situation arises you'll have the experience, confidence, and knowledge to make the learning experience seem more effortless. 

Self awareness is a major component of this process.  You need to develop awareness of your preferred learning environment. What resources can you draw upon and use for goal setting and monitoring this effort toward reaching your goals?  See Learning Strategies and Strategic Learning and Study Skills, in this handbook.

 

Cognitive Learning to learn skills:

Adapted from UNM Organizational Learning & Instructional Technologies course Learning to Learn:            Patricia Boverie, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Educational Leadership & Organizational Learning, 1997.  

• Develop critical evaluation skills

• Develop an appreciation for the "organizing circumstance" which caused the need to learn something new or learn it in a new way.

• Develop thinking skills

• Convergent: Synthesizes incoming information
• Divergently: making lateral connections, creative thinking.
• Critically: analytical, focuses on major points, where the information comes from, why the information affects the learner, or their work and how, also looking at the parts involved.
• Intuitively:understanding the connectedness between concepts, and the larger or intended meaning involved or implied.

• Learn for understanding, integrate concepts and learn relationships between concepts.

• Don't try to memorize everything!

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Contact the Hispanic and Native American Center of Excellence
University of New Mexico School of Medicine
(505) 272-1419

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