Students' readiness

Learning itself can be seen as the targeted implementation of newly acquired information into the Long-Term Memory. There are basically two things that you should know:

1. There are three potential scenarios about what can happen with any perceived information:

• Nothing is being done with the information, e.g. listening to people talking randomly on the bus (uninteresting conversation). Since the brain doesn't see any point in keeping the information it will be forgotten right away.
  
• You shortly work with the information before it can be cast out of the brain, e.g. memorizing a telephone number until you've found something to write it down. Once the information has been used and the brain doesn't see any other reason for keeping the information, it will be forgotten.
  
• You are actively working with the information which is either relateable to already existing knowledge or completely new but somehow relevant to you.
  

When you combine those three scenarios to the structure of the memory, we can conclude the following:

Any information that is being perceived, either actively or passively, will be cognitively present for a very short of time. In this stage, the information is in the so called working memory. Most of the information gathered there will be forgotten in less than a second, e.g. background noises. Those pieces of information that require attention will be forwarded to the short-term memory. This is the part where you can memorize telephone numbers for a short time. But to transfer information into knowledge, the information has to be implemented into the long-term memory and the path from short-term to long-term memory requires certain that the student has to fulfil. 

The first aspect has already been mentioned - attention. If you are not paying attention, then there is no way that you can save the content of this course into your long-term memory.

The next aspect is activeness. You can actually get information into your long-term memory by simply repeating it over and over again, but the most effective way to generate knowledge is to actively work with the information during the learning process, e.g. summarize texts in your own words after reading, take sample-exams to test your knowledge, etc. You will learn more strategies and techniques in the next unit.

(source: www.careeraddict.com)

2. Additionally to all that, learning itself is always an individual process. There is no "sample solution" that provides the perfect learning approach for everybody. 

In this module, you will learn about learning strategies and techniques, but also about other aspects that will influence the effectiveness of your learning.