Teaching or Learning
We all have spent many years studying and memorizing...
Have we really learned much?
How much do we remember from high school or college subjects?
The truth is: very little. Why?
- Our mind retains only useful information
Most schools' pedagogical methods are based on memorization and testing. Unfortunately, these are actually teaching methods and not learning ones. We usually remember the pieces of information that we have expressed somehow: whether in arguments, speeches, exams, or in our own internal mental dialogs. Why is it so? Just because the human mind functions efficiently and practically storing only useful information. The rest of the data is kept at what can be roughly called the "back" of the long-term memory, where it gradually falls in misuse. Had it been not this way, the human brain would be permanently overloaded with excessive information. As a result, thinking would be impossible.
- Thinking transforms information into knowledge
In order to transform any new bit of information into knowledge, we have to activate the process of thinking. Thinking integrates data through synthesis, analogy, and deduction thus generating the knowledge and enabling problem-solving. All this newly acquired knowledge is stored in a kind of "operating system". The more new information is processed by this "operating system", the more efficient its functioning becomes. For this very reason; the more we think, the more intelligent we become. It works like a muscle.
- How to turn data into useful & permanent mind files?
Any new bit of perceived data is stored initially into a "temporary" memory. Then, we may decide whether to pass it to the long-term memory and fix it there by creating emotional links, logical routes, and/or practical applications. These associative relationships will help the mind track and retrieve the processed data, so that it would not be lost or forgotten. Overloading the long-term memory with incredible amounts of information without strong associative tracks or links will lead to a messy and weak memory data file. Any data stored this way will be hard to retrieve, or in other words, very difficult to remember. Therefore, it is not a matter of how much we study, but rather what and how we study.
- Is it possible to increase the capacity of our mind?
The issue is not so simple. First, we must first create additional mental schemata that will allow us to process and store any new flows of useful information. Such new mental pathways are generated with the sum of strong data associative links, as mentioned before. On the other hand, it is the intensity and frequency of the new data processing through the recently created pathways and schemata that will actually expand and fix a higher level of mental capacity.
- How does BIU pedagogy work?
The key to successful learning is in the type of mental process that takes place when we extract information from a text and how we have to reprocess and express it in the form of written work. Home studying becomes an active phenomenon that enables comprehension (reading and search for data), new mental schemata (concepts hierarchy and interrelation), and input transformation (data reorganization and writing). The newly acquired thinking structures do not rely on classic memorization and help to increase our reasoning capacity and problem-solving skills. This intellectual improvement is permanent and expanding. Distance learning education at Bircham International University will not become simple life training, it becomes a permanent absorption of newly acquired materials and skills.