The Pi Model and Learning How to Learn with Dr. Barbara Oakley

Research says that listening to smooth music while studying helps you focus, concentrate, relax your mind, and improve your memory. While you should not listen to high-sound music while studying as it could lead to harm your ears or may distract you from your studies.

In this blog, Dr. Barbara Oakley will discuss with us whether should you listen to music while studying.

Dr. Barbara Oakley is a professor at Oakland University and has a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering. Professor Barbara Oakley knows firsthand how it feels to struggle with Math. She flunked her way through high school math and science courses, before enlisting in the army immediately after graduation.

When she saw how her lack of mathematical and technical savvy severely limited her options — both to rise in the military and to explore other careers — she returned to school with a newfound determination to re-tool her brain to master the very subjects that had given her so much trouble throughout her entire life.

In her book “A Mind For Numbers” – Dr. Oakley lets us in on the secrets to learning effectively — secrets that even dedicated and successful students wish they’d known earlier.

In this interview with Dr. Oakley by Scott Young they talked about a number of interesting topics on how to learn effectively.

Scott Young did the “The MIT Challenge“, where he attempted successfully to learn the MIT’s 4-year computer science curriculum without taking classes, and “The Year Without English“, where he went to four countries with a friend to learn four languages in one year.

Should You Listen to Music While Studying? Interview with Dr. Barbara Oakley

 

Here are some interesting bits from the interview:

Scott: So I wanted to start with a small issue that I think is quite an interesting one and the research on whether should you listen to music while you’re studying.

Dr. Oakley: That’s an interesting question and it’s kinda funny because when I speak in public that’s always one of the biggest questions I have and I think it’s because we often hear that you shouldn’t listen to music but the interesting thing is that if you go an look at the research on whether or not you should listen to music you can find research that supports pretty much any position you’d like to have supported!

So if you don’t like music you’ll find research that says no, don’t listen to music and you’ll find other research that says that it’s quite alright!

The only things that research says for sure is that you shouldn’t listen to super loud music when you’re trying to study and if the music has lyrics and you’re trying to do anything verbal (reading) you may not want to listen to music because the lyrics will interfere with learning.

Scott: After all the research, through your course Learning How To Learn (where you worked with millions of students) so what do you think is the most useful piece of advice that is the most infrequently applied when it comes to learning?

Dr. Oakley: It’s unquestionably the idea of chunking. Chunking is a way of gaining procedural fluency in whatever topic you’re trying to become an expert in. To explain that, let’s take something simple like backing up a car. So when you first back up a car it’s so hard, do you look behind you? Do you look in the side mirror? Do you look in the front mirror? It’s very difficult and you might be thinking, I will never be able to back up a car.

But within a few days or a week or two, you begin to learn to back up the car. In fact, after a little bit, you can do it while you’re talking to your friends or listening to the radio. It’s super easy. So backing up a car has become one united neural chunk in your mind so all you have to do is call that into your working memory. Because it’s one thing, it doesn’t block out other parts of your working memory so you can actually do other things at the same time.

Let’s say your child is very intelligent plus very diligent in her studies. Not only that, say You and your spouse are highly educated professionals.

Educating your kid should be walk in the park, Right?

Maybe not …

eTutorWorld was privileged to talk with the parents (both physicians) of one of our student who shared the many challenges they had faced while looking for help with their child’s studies.

Rajat (ETW Customer Service):

Your daughter P.D. has been with eTutorWorld for some time now and she did her SCAT test prep with us and she got good marks in the test. So, this is a series of interviews/discussions that we do with our students and parents who have been doing well academically. Mr. Aso Shanglai, our Marketing Head would be taking this session.

 

ETW:

We have Dr. R.D. and his wife Dr. A.D., the parents of P.D. joining us in today’s discussion which would cover her academic performance and how her parents are contributing towards her success in studies. We will also try and understand how eTutorWorld can do more for the students and their parents.

Dr. R.D. is a Cardiologist and Dr. A.D. is a Pediatrician.

 

[ETW to the Parents] Please share anything you would like about your kid’s experience with eTutorWorld.

 

Dr. R.D.:

Sure. We started with eTutorWorld, if I remember correctly in December or November 2016. My wife will correct me – was it November or December?

 

Dr. A.D.:

It was December.

 

Dr. R.D.:

Thanks … yeah, we started in December and obviously we have been very impressed with the structure and tutoring of eTutorWorld.

 

Dr. A.D.:

To be very honest, we did not even know what SCAT was. We had come to know about SCAT a week before [signing up with eTutorWorld] and we searched in the Net to find out what a child is expected to know, what are the resources and we came across this [eTutorWorld] and we did one session and we were impressed by the knowledge & confidence of the team in how to approach the SCAT.

 

Dr. R.D.:

We did our Google search obviously and eTutorWorld was one of the name that came up. Before we signed up with eTutorWorld, we went ahead and purchased another one with Question series from one of the website and we were happy with that one. We then came across eTutorWorld and were impressed by the fact that the company’s origins were from India. And once we started doing the course after our first Free session, if I remember correctly, with Ms. Raj she setup more trial classes for Math and English, for Verbal and Quantitative tests. They were very good and we liked a lot the way the course has been structured.

For SCAT, someone told us that P.D. has been doing good in studies and you should try to get her into taking SCAT and we did not know what SCAT was, as my wife said.

And all credit goes to eTutorWorld and especially Ms. Abi [the SCAT tutor], because she is very good. She is very to the point and her courses are very good and we kept all the notes which she had been sharing on the Whiteboard [part of the Online tutorial tool] and we kept all of it in a folder arranged categorically and specially when we are not having classes with eTutorWorld, P.D. must have gone through the material from the first to the last page about 30-40 times. She also used the trial exams which are on your website.

So, it was a combined effort which resulted in success in SCAT. And, I think it was the eTutorWorld personal one-to-one classes which were more helpful than the worksheets questions because the questions which are there on the website are good but are too difficult. It’s good to do some higher preparation but sometimes it is discouraging for the child to attempt these questions and not be able to do them. But overall it was a great experience.

 

ETW:

Thank you for the feedback and now would you like to take some time to share her dreams or aspirations for her future or if it is not too early, do you have any plans for her or does she have any plans for herself?

 

Dr. A.D.:

No, you know what – she is too young and since we are both physicians and we grew up in India so we know how much pressure can be put up by your parents. Right now, our goal is on getting her foundations strong because we believe that once your foundations are strong you can do anything. It can even become limitless.

With eTutorWorld, it opened up a new “world” for us to understand how even without seeing the face of a person a long-distance tutoring could be of so much help. It was something we had never explored before.

 

Dr. R.D.:

Yes, even I told my brother, who is a Computer Scientist here in Cupertino and I was telling him we regret that his kids did not do it because they were doing some classes locally here.

 

Dr. A.D.:

You know, the Company XYZ ones [A leading company with Learning Centers spread across the world] and the other local ones. We had sent P.D. to XYZ before but we didn’t like it so we just stopped it because it was too boring.

 

Dr. R.D.:

Monotonous … because they have the same booklet which they keep doing. Then we also did the Company ABC Math [A leading Math App]. We were still with ABC Math when we started with eTutorWorld. Right now, we have stopped everything else and are just with eTutorWorld. Now, she is doing the John Hopkins [SCAT] Honors Pre-Algebra and there is lot of work to be done there.

 

Dr. A.D.:

See, what a big difference we noticed in eTutorWorld compared to the way we were taught was the easy way of reaching the answers which is more exciting to the students rather than struggling with the questions. Knowing the good and easy way to solve problems correctly in Math is very helpful.

 

Dr. R.D.:

Actually, BOTH of us are learning to be honest with you. Because when we sit along with P.D., I am also able to teach P.D. better. We also had learnt the better way to reach from point A to B.

What we liked about Ms. Abi was her short cuts and very crystal-clear methods of doing things. We really like that.

 

Dr. A.D.:

Yes, they are making the concepts clearer and the child becomes interested in the subject and that is more important than anything else.

 

Dr. R.D.:

Yes, because P.D. is excited when she has to do the eTutorWorld classes. She knows that, the Math class is coming up and she gets excited about it. Today, we were half an hour away from home and were doing few things and she said, “Oh, let’s go ahead and be in front of the computer at least 15 minutes before so that we are all ready”. She likes to keep everything ready and next to her and that is a BIG PLUS because when you do a class and you don’t have a fear … we grew up in India and you know we have a kind of fear with the teacher so, when you don’t have a fear you can interact freely.

If, I have to add just one point then the new update which you have done, I think your older version was better than what you have now because we are not able to save any of the whiteboard. In the past, we were able to save those whiteboards as a PDF and it’s good to have a hard copy of the things which have been taught because she can go back and revise any time. So, with the new update which you have in the ZOOM [web conference facility] we have been given the suggestions that we can take a snapshot and those things are okay but they are not very practical as they are not same as a PDF file.

My only request would be that if we can have this feature back because we want to keep eTutorWorld for a long term and we want to spread the news that you guys are Great but we would like a fix to this problem of saving the whiteboards. Please look into it.

 

ETW:

We were going to ask lot of questions but it seems you have already answered them [laughing].

 

Dr. R.D.:

We didn’t give you a chance! Because we are good in talking and that’s what we do and can talk for ever [laughing].

 

ETW:

Anyway, it’s my job to listen forever so we are a good match [laughing].

 

Dr. R.D.:

If there’s anything that you would like to ask, please do.

 

ETW:

Whatever you have shared has been quite helpful and we are good on that. Just one query, did P.D. have any challenges academically before she started with eTutorWorld?

 

Dr. R.D.:

No, actually she had always been good in school. The only thing is that she takes time to be free with anyone so, that’s the only problem but otherwise she has always been good in school and even in her class she is in the top.

One of the reason, we went for this course [SCAT] was that I did not want her to keep on having this false sense of feeling that “Oh, I know a lot” because that is a very dangerous thing and we have all gone through that and we just want her to know that your foundations have to be strong as my wife said and you need to know the basics. Everyone keeps on saying you are good, good but at the end of the day you have some simple question – you are scared to ask someone.

That’s the reason we like the eTutorWorld because she is being revised and her basic principles are being cleared up.

 

Dr. A.D.:

Yeah, I think it is good for these students who are growing up here to be taught by a teacher from India because in India the basics are taught well. Here the students are not put under any pressure and whatever right or wrong answers are given the children are always appreciated for whatever effort they make but in the long run in some point it may not be enough. So, learning from someone in India – you know their Math is really strong and they have those values, which would help the kids here.

 

ETW:

Would you like to recommend or suggest something for eTutorWorld to improve upon?

 

Dr. R.D.:

You know, initially we had some technical glitches but those were temporary and were resolved and we learnt that the Chrome browser is the best for eTutorWorld. Apart from that and the saving of the whiteboard, I don’t think there is anything else. The value of the whiteboard lies in the fact that unlike notes or text-books they are both audio and visual so compared to a text book where there are hundreds of pages with no visual memory of what you have learnt. But whatever you learn on the Whiteboard and have printed out for SCAT and other courses, they have helped a lot.

Your class timing is great and if few of your teachers are available more it will be great because sometimes we struggle with that. Ms. Abi is available for more time slots but with the other two teachers the availability is lesser during the weekends. So, we have limited options but we are figuring it out and will work around it.

 

ETW:

In your search for tutoring help for your child, is there anything that you would like to share?

 

Dr. R.D.:

Before eTutorWorld, the other company with which we started there was nobody to answer your phone calls or do anything but with eTutorWorld the best thing is that there is always someone who is answering the call and you know the email reply, you get it like in a flash. P.D. was sick a few days ago and I had sent an email and Rajat replied instantly and we did not need to make a phone call to reschedule and that is great customer service. We don’t have any problems and when I was booking the 50 classes, I did not have problem. I talked to you guys and it was setup right away and it went very smoothly.

The Customer Service is fabulous and let me tell you, I never had any experience where they know your name and who is calling and what class is scheduled.

 

ETW:

Yes, I have been hearing about our Customer Service Team for quite some time now, especially about Rajat.

 

Dr. R.D.:

He always replies to our email and I send the homework and he forwards it to the teachers and lets me know and all this is very good. And obviously it is a different timezone so, I don’t know how he does it but we get our reply.

 

ETW:

Thank you on behalf of our Customer Service Team for your kind words. Now, for the last question – you have already mentioned that you would be recommending eTutorWorld to your friends and family, so would you like to add anything on that?

 

Dr. R.D.:

Absolutely, we will be recommending to our friends and family. We will let them know and we have already told a few of them and we would tell them how good are the services. We are going to use your services for a long term while P.D. is growing up so that she is taught in the right way.

We have done a lot and tried many ways to get her help in studies – we even tried home tutoring and as my wife said we had gone to XYZ, to ABC …

 

Dr. A.D.:

Ourselves, also.

 

Dr. R.D.:

Yes [laughing], we have tried teaching her ourselves also and both of us are physicians but for us nothing is more important than teaching her so, my wife has tried but after a certain point of time we realized that we were not born to be teachers. We don’t know the correct method to teach, the correct path or even the shortcuts to teach. We might try to teach something and we realized that we don’t want her to learn our way but the correct way.

 

ETW:

Thank you so much for the insights and your time. Thanks!