Friday, June 18, 2004

Making sense of what we learn

We write,read and work on the stuff necessary to either complete our coursework or to do with our work.As we keep growing or learning and progressing through our careers and academic struggles, each one of us develops his/her own pattern of doing things.This aids or influences the way we think, the way we analyze, strategies we use for problem solving, organizing, proioritizing and planning our goals, developing our interests and fostering them etc.. etc.. through imitation and sometimes modelling them to help others.The methods of learning and the surroundings influence the individual and contribute to the evolution of the person. Hence no one person is in any way similar to another.
But.... we do need to know the best ways to function productively in the environment we live.This means to adapt, folow and function according to the rules of the society(Darwin's theory of " The survival of the fittest" is still valid).
Education plays a major role in shaping the individual. In a way the term "education" is a very broad one and every person differs in their perspective. However the end result is always enlightening and improving oneself.
So the methods/ strategies used to help students gain knowledge should be practical enough. They should be able to apply the knowledge and the skills to develop their analytical skills, problem solving skills, organizing and analyzing in a genrealized way( here "generalised" means able to apply one's knowledge in different situations using the same strategy).
Ok so the gist of the whole story or the gyan of the day is to have a practical approach towards the strategies used in teaching.
Cos our reading and learning habits have a great influence on our lifestyles too.

Comments:
What do you mean by a practical approaches? I am getting confused between its relation to 'generalized learning way'
it helps to assume learning itself as another process that has a definite rule to follow. ex: you do this this and this and then you have learnt. within this framework, if we are able to bring in past experience, generality of test cases as well as bias towards what is good, i would say we could have a 'ideal learning scheme' to get the best out of ourselves
 
Hi Sham,
Thanks for your very introspective feedback. Well, whatever I have written are purely my assumptions or rather what I feel. I personally feel that a person who is organized in his work expecially if it is related to his academics I feel it influences their life style. They tend to be organized even in whatever they do, including their way of living or the routine.
And by practical approach I am trying to say tthat every strategy that we use, like the problem solving strategies, analyzing skills,influence our mental capacity in solving simple problems of our daily lives. So if you use a certain strategy to work on your thesis you tend to use the same to buy a commodity or even choosing the activities you will be doing.

So I personally feel that when we are talking about education it should really help people to think in such a way which is " practical" and " beneficial".And generalisation is nothing but the capacity to apply what you learn in different situations.
And well, I really agree that htere should be an ideal learning scheme but yousee again different people learn differently. However there should be a guideline which can help others figure out what they want and how they can.

I hope I answered your question or did I confuse you even more?:)
 
i think i understand your reasoning.
i was just curious about your perspective on learning.
my thesis is about organizational learning in artificial agents, part of which is to develop a framework for such learning.
we humans generalize, specialize and adapt (practicality) a single succesful learning technique pretty naturally. but if we analyze why we do so, the logic is not simple.
intuition (which some call intelligence) is something hard to achieve systematically, without it the whole one ideal learning framework is probably too simple to be meaningful...
i think i am degressing from the topic now, so i stop here :)
PS: if you notice my comments, i use terms like 'learning scheme' 'framework'..basically from the AI jargon
 
Well, I agree with your theory that it is really difficult to know why we follow a certain path or what really defines or giudes our functioning and thinking. But apart from inutition, I feel the background knwoledge, or rather the experience teaches us a lot. In fact we can go back to the way we our conditioned. All the behaviors which lead to favourable consequences are reinforced while the ones which lead ot unfavourable consequences are usually avoided. But they also help the person to think more deeply, analys what went wrong and give it a try again. And in case if it doesn’t work out then to try out another method. So we do a lot of trail and error. But as you had said it is always good to have something “time tested” or a framework which could be ideal and can be altered according to each individuals’ needs .
 
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