It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a classroom. I don’t remember exactly how I used to study in school. Getting back into study mode has been a bit of a challenge. But preparing for the MCTS 70-448 has yielded some interesting fruit.
Aside from improving my concentration, and getting deeper into some of SQL Server’s business intelligence features, it has helped me learn a little about how I learn. I know different people probably have different learning styles. So I’m not sure if this will help anybody but I figured I’d share anyway.
After the first few chapters of studying, I learned a trick that helped me absorb the material much more quickly. Instead of reading a lesson and then doing the exercises, now I read the introduction to the lesson first, work through the examples at the end of each lesson second, and finally I go back and read the lesson and take notes.
I have enough experience with the various technologies (SSIS, SSAS, SSRS, etc) so that doing the exercises is no big deal. The book gives very precise directions (sometimes which I follow and sometimes use as rough guidelines). Reading the lesson introduction puts a few things on my radar. I find that doing the exercises gives me a good basic mental model of a concept. That model has a lot of holes in it but it hangs together. Then when I go back and read the lesson, the theory and principles plug in all those holes and the model becomes much more substantial. And it sticks. Early on I was finding that I would read a chapter, do the exercises and then go back and have to read the chapter again.
Boiled down, I suppose the process looks like this:
- Acquire just enough knowledge so that you can start getting actual experience.
- Get some experience.
- Take what you learned from your experience and plug in the holes with more knowledge.
- Repeat.
This is a little different than 1. Get all the knowledge possible, then 2. Try to apply it before moving on to the next thing.
It seems to me that this process is somehow along the same lines as thinkering:
The conceptual thinking that goes along with tinkering – making things with your hands.
That comes from Psychology Today: Thinkering, Part 2. Does Exxon-Mobil Have It Backwards?.
Why does thinkering work (also from PT)?
Symbolic knowledge readily builds upon sensual and kinesthetic knowledge – only rarely and with great difficulty does it work the other way around.
The article is talking more about building a base of sensual and kinesthetic knowledge. Not sure that clicking my mouse and typing quite qualifies as that. Even so, the process of getting experience as soon as possible and building on that seems to be the same.
