An aide mémoire for learning
Have you ever been in a situation where you are in a lecture and you realise that you do not understand what is being talked about? Or you hear a concept, word, or phrase that you do not know? These things can float around in our heads for a while but then we forget about them. What we are left with a sense of dread about things we are not grasping, understanding, or learning, along with not actually progressing in our learning. Instead, it is helpful to externalise these things into one location so that, during times of independent study, you have a list that you can consult of things you need to look up and learn about. This takes away then need to try to remember, removing any lingering dread. Instead, you are providing yourself with a plan of what to study and investigate.
When I was a student (both undergraduate and postgraduate), my place for doing this was the back pages of my notebook. It would quickly get filled with words and concepts that I wanted to look up and learn more about it. I found this to be very helpful.
Later as a lecturer, I developed a 1-page table (and have distributed 100s of copies to students over the years) that can be used instead:
It has a progressive style where topics can be deleted and moved to the right to indicate when something is going from ‘not understood’ to ‘improving’ (need to get better at) and then ‘got the hang of’. This is a nice way to track your learning and to have a clear plan of what to focus on. It also gives you a nice sense of satisfaction as you move things across the table and eventually cross them out when you have got the hang of them.
The source code can be found here: https://gist.github.com/dorchard/562e2aa85bf95acce606fa24c4ec80d0