Summary
I tried a simple approach to doing a udacity course - do them in breaks of 5-10 minutes while doing your obligatory work. Over a period of three days, I had finished 10 units, effortlessly. Total time taken - 3 hours and 30 minutes
But watching the videos is not all there is to learning, which is why I was very careful with the notes.
That little experiment
One or the other thing kept pulling me away from doing the courses. It's hard to be committed to something voluntarily unless your life depends on it. Interest can sure get you started, but in love, life and passion - plain commitment matters more than your zeal. (I'm sure Dravid would agree and Prof. Gautum Kaul would utter such a statement)
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| The stopwatch helped me keep track of break time and the activity tracker was very useful for logging total time. |
Improvising, and not waiting for the perfect time, I decided to do a little experiment. I'd study my obligatory subjects and in between them, I'd pick up a subject which is pretty easy to grasp.
The plan was to spend 5-10 minutes watching the videos of that course and taking notes. All breaks should go in such a manner. Udacity courses came in handy because they have videos that range from 30 seconds - 3 minutes.
The results were very uplifting. Over a course of three days, for the cumulative time of 3 hours and 30 minutes, I had finished ten units of the course.
Before we get down to notes, here's why you are uncool if you think they're uncool
The college I study in actually takes into consideration attendance in classes. I was doing a course under the current dean, Prof. LS Ganesh. He rarely took any attendance. He didn't think it correlated with learning. Pretty radical approach in India.
You'd think he was very liberal, for the sake of being liberal. No. He, in earlier times, checked each student's notes to give him an honest feedback. This was not for the sake of being an off the rocker disciplinarian, but for reminding students that the notes you take - either now or in boardroom meetings later on in life - are the things that are left with you after the event is done.
How good those notes are depend on the clarity of your thinking. CLARITY of mind. Now THAT is something to aim for.
I have shared the images of the notes here, to do a bit of an analysis:
I noted them down alright, but see the second line - that is the sequence of events jotted down from memory. The amount of processing that is required: recollecting, elucidating and becoming aware of gaps in our thinking, we get to learn. (Gaps in my thinking - marked with a checkbox)
There are a lot of people out there, who go through their learning material assimilating something by chance and creating chaos rather than benign confusion. That's not the way to learn. WHY? You'll do something more if you enjoy it. You cannot enjoy a confused state of mind.
This is from one of the more involved units. It requires the assimilation of a problem and simplifying it to a procedure.
You can clearly see that I am not a big fan of copying verbatim notes. I am actually jotting down my own thoughts to ponder later. Plus, annotation is the order of the day. Look at the arrows.
You will also find a note at the top that I should attempt questions - whether illustrations or exercises before they are given. That attitude gets noted down here. We all develop attitudes while learning. Becoming conscious of them is what will allow us to practice them.
Passively going through some process and actively chasing standards - these two are very different things. You make a choice.
