To some the course may feel to be too obvious from the title. But make no mistake, you are in for an amazing journey into understanding the neuroscience of how the human brain operates. The course is kept pretty light and is approachable to anyone over the age of 13 (as per my opinion). The sooner you complete this course in your life, the more you will thank yourself in the future.

You will start taking a step back and observe and understand the little cues as you learn a new skill or concept. The instructors have done a great job of condensing the latest scientific research for the human brain, into understandable tidbits for people outside the research community. If you are new on coursera or have been on the platform for a while, this should definitely be the next course you take.

A lot great inspirational content, pleasant teaching and presentation.

Some of the transcript-language, when read without the video, is not really clear, but vague. Those instances , there are quiet a few, took a bunch of guessing, to figure out what the interviewer or guest meant to say. A L O T of info material . So,if you are one of us- creatives / artists, you my find yourself a bit overwhelmed. Just take it easy, pick the info you think you need and complete the course, it will make you A) think a lot more about your children, students and your own learning habits. And thats a very good thing. I just got married, after 76 years und have a little 6 year old, who needs help with 'Learning how to Learn' . So this is my opportunity to learn more, so I can help her. Thanks Coursera

This was such a life changing course. I learned so much from Barbara Oakley. I also highly recommend getting the book that goes with the course. Learning How to Learn not only made me a better learner, but it made me enjoy the entire process of learning so much.

There are a few intuitive concepts that might seem repetitive, especially if you took psychology or neuro-psychology courses. Concepts like Pomodoro Effect (25 minutes of focused learning followed by a 5 minute reward) and memory techniques are topics that follow everyone in college. However, the way the professors present the material is so thorough, that I couldn't help but implement them in my current studies.

This course is a definite must, and I highly recommend it for people who are struggling with challenging coursework.

Excellent course on 'Learning How to Learn". Dr.Barb's presentation style is amazing. The techniques mentioned in this course are really helpful especially the Pomodoro Technique. I just loved it. Got a basic understanding of neuro-scientific perspective of our learning. Optional interview sessions are just the icing on the cake. It's really an opportunity to hear from legend learners and scientists from varying disciplines and geographies. I haven't missed any of those interview sessions. I would say it shouldn't be labelled as 'Optional'. All students of this course should listen to those interviews.

Hats off, Dr.Barb and Dr.Terrence for this wonderful course. Thank you very much for sharing bits of your knowledge for the benefit of us. Waiting to see more courses from this team!!

I have studied many resources on study skills in addition to on other topics taken many classes, workshops, read books, listened to audios, and this is one of the best classes I have ever taken as well as the best, hands down, for "learning how to learn." I have told so many people about it and shared it with my employer. I started using everything right away in my work. If you have just a few moments in your day, listen to it while you're getting dressed (if you don't have time for the fun videos) and you will absorb much. The bonus material is also excellent. My study skills, testing, anxiety around learning/getting wrong, memory, efficiency (and less procrastination!) and more are all SIGNIFICANTLY better. Barbara is a fun, honest and engaging teacher who comes from her heart.

While nothing you learn in this course seems particularly ground-breaking, being able to hear it in such simple and to the point videos makes all the difference. I felt like I've heard it all before, especially when discussing particular tools like Pomodoro, but this time something finally clicked with me. I think this course should be taught to children so this helpful behaviours can be enforced in them from young age. I'm starting my own journey now with preparations for different certifications in my own field of work, and I'm eager to see how much better can I do with all those tools given to me by this course. Thank you so much for this! I have also scheduled the follow-up course on Mindshift - I will use it to strengthen the already acquired concepts and to build up on them.

Hi All,

I have just completed the course "Learning how to learn". It gave me a fresh perspective to look at the process of learning in place of the end product. It is astonishing to get a hold over explanations regarding brain functioning which we looked over carelessly. It gave a solid insight over the reasons of brain activity that we are aware of since ages but didn't knew the technicalities behind it. Particularly, the interviews that Barbara conducted with learners and researchers across the world helped significantly.

The mentors: Terrence Sejnowski and Barbara Oakley were really helpful with their research and imparted techniques. I would like to especially thank Barbara for her voice through which she made learning simple and enjoyable.

Have a happy "Learning how to learn".

At first, I would like to say that this course has bought immense changes within me and in my studying process!

Dr. Barbara Oakley Ma'am is a very kind and friendly person/instructor I have ever met any of my online classes. She made me realize that yes even I can also solve the tougher mathematics sums or any tough exercises, readings, which was quite difficult for me previously. And Dr. Terrence Sejnowsky Sir is an awesome instructor. His learning tips were great to achieve, and also for Dr. Oakley Ma'am. Thank you so much, Ma'am and Sir, for this wonderful course and your instructions.

Overall I loved this course and enjoyed it very much. I'll suggest this course strongly if you guys are suffering from how to learn/ achieve difficult things and how to concentrate on studies.

One word ... FANTASTIC! Thank you Learning how to Learn team for your tremendous effort in making this message available to all. You are clearly passionate about empowering learning and also about teaching. This is the first MOOC that I will complete to the end, it it has given me the courage to expand my horizons and learn something new and/or something scary that I never thought I could possibly do - you don't always have to be a 'natural' at something to learn something new. Thank you for showing the world that anyone can be brilliant by implementing some smart, effective, and efficient strategies. As well as applying a bit of grit. Thank you for teaching us how to learn. A great and highly recommended course for absolutely everyone - because we are all life-long learners.

That is an outstanding course! I really learned a lot about how to improve my learning and I am putting this knowledge into practice in many other areas of my life. The distinction of focus mode x diffuse mode helps to understand that learning cannot be an inertial action of only doing the same thing all the time. Variation is extremely important! I also enjoyed a lot the taught techniques like the Pomodoro, which can be life changing, together with spaced learning (I'm using Anki, another course's suggestion), retrieving and interleaving.

It also made me deal much better with procrastination! Thank you very much for such an opportunity. I'll take that for the rest of my life and share this knowledge with friends and relatives, to whom I'm going also to reccomend this course!

I really like this course and highly evaluate the materials taught by Barb Oakley and Terry Sejnowski. I actually learn a lot of things in the course and I particularly like Pomodoro technique which helps me deal with procrastination very effectively. I also do understand why we should switch our brain between two modes, say focused mode and diffuse mode, in order to be more productive. I really enjoy this course and would like to share this with my students. I am now an assistant professor in math (I used to be very very bad at math) but I even haven't known how to learn new things effectively until I take this awesome course. I strongly believe that many people would like this course and learn a lot from it. Again, thanks Barb and Terry for making such a wonderful course!

Exceptional course. It is thoughtfully designed to help each person / persona associate their learning difficulties / challenges (from past and on going experiences) and take the right course of action. Both Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski were brilliant in delivering their thoughts to make this course a very effective one. I completed this course one and a half years back but did not lose its impact yet. There are many additional resources and very useful interviews of many people exceptional in their fields. I would recommend this course for everyone. I have been getting regular weekly updates regarding this field as part of this course association. Great work. I started Mindshift course hoping that it will bring in a lot of benefits and positive feelings.

I had heard a lot about this course and wanted to take it. A good experience.

It has now become a good point of reference when I need to go back to certain sources, since the topics covered are all based on scientific evidence listed in an exhaustive way.

I recommend it to anyone (student or teacher) who has never studied the theme of "learning how to learn".

The brain does not come to us with an instruction manual, so everyone is called to build their own. Without a minimum of self-study to learn how to learn, a lot of valuable time is wasted studying inefficiently. There are many teachers who do not know how to guide students to improve themselves.

A small course like this, a few hours a week over a month, can make a difference and change your way of teaching and studying.

I really cannot find the words to describe how AMAZING this course is. I'll start by the basics: the topic is quite interesting and the material follows an ideal structure so it is easy to go through the course. Moreover, this course goes far beyond learning for school or university: it offers tools to hugely improve your everyday life! On top of it, the lectures are short, concise and entertaining. The instructors do not only help you lots to understand what they are saying (it's cool how consistent they are by using the very same tips they mention in their lessons), but also they are tremendously charismatic and to me it felt like they really cared about me even if -clearly- they don't even know I exist. I am even sad to have finished the course. Thank you very much!!!

I strongly believe that almost everyone will benefit greatly by taking this course. I usually don't bother to leave reviews but the course instructors, Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski, truly deserve credit. I'm just gonna say this... this course will change your life. And I don't say that lightly. I have always thought of myself as a fast and effective learner but even so, this course made me even better so just imagine what it could do to people who think that they are slow learners or who think that they are just not cut out for "difficult" subjects such as Maths and Physics. My deepest gratitude goes to Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski. I wish I could one day meet both of you and thank you personally. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Это мой первый курс, который я прошла на Coursera и я очень надеюсь, что другие курсы будут такими же качественными, интересными и доступными как этот. Почерпнула для себя огромное количество полезной информации не только из теоретических объяснений, но и из интервью. Очень интересно было узнать, что существует такое понятие, как "синдром самозванца", которым я страдаю ( к счастью, не одна и оказывается, есть определенные приемы, как его преодолеть). Очень полезными были советы о том, как писать научные работы и эссе и как научиться задавать вопросы, понять, почему даже в обширных дискуссионных темах вопросы не возникают. Я очень довольна, рекомендую курс всем - и школьникам и студентам и просто всем, кто учит иностранный язык и интересуется саморазвитием. Спасибо!

I started taking this course to understand and learn better study techniques for the things I am about to learn going forth. I am a Software Engineer at Google currently & after spending 6 years in my career, I wanted to start re-learning some old concepts and many new things. Being a full-time employee, its necessary to have efficient learning methods at my finger-tips, so I could optimise my work-life-study balance, and this course has definitely provided me with those. Simple things like working a little bit on something daily and using recall over rereading has been super-helpful while even learning new techniques that help me with my daily work. I would definitely recommend this course to every full-time student and anyone who is starting to learn new things.

to maintain relevancy and continued success in professional world, one needs to be in an environment of continuous learning today. For many of us who are long removed from their college classrooms, this is easier said than done . Time is restricted, distractions and many and so are responsibilities. This course provides wonderful set of strategies and techniques to maximize and upgrade learning capabilities. From the very basics - like importance of sleep - to more intricate techniques like recall over repetition - it is helping me unlearn several things and learn new. It also fills me with lot of hope that it is possible for everyone to learn, and learn better ! Terry and Barbara do an amazing job and by the end of the course, have become something of a coach !

This is hands down one of the best courses on personal development I have ever taken. I wish I had seen a material like this way before. The sooner someone experiences this content in life the better. Ideally covered with spaced repetition (easter egg right here) over our childhood and teenagehood years. What you are you going to get from this course are extremely valuable actionable insights on how to learn ANYTHING as effectively as possible according to Science. Since learning new things is one of the best things in life (am I right?!), it really does not get any better than this. I would never be able to express my gratitude towards Barb and Terry for taking the time and effort to build this precious material and make it easily accessible. Highly recommended!

This course was quite interesting and had a lot of useful ideas. I believe that the techiques taught here would definitely be beneficial for many subjects. I am a physicican and recognize that many of the areas of medicine may require pure memory and often "understanding" is not really part of the learning. But the ideas behind making up crazy sentences to help jog your memory of lists is definitely something that I have used and have found very useful. Although I completed school many years ago, I still refer to some of those "crazy sentences" to jog my memory when necessary. I enjoyed taking this course and I thought the instructors were very good. I wish I could have taken this course many years ago when it could have made medical school a bit easier.

This course should be compulsory in all areas of education from school to universities. Barbaba Oakley is a gifted teacher, mentor and a great motivator. I always had a trap of "talent and passion" stereotype and now(thanks to this course) it changed. Now i know that there is such thing as neuroplasticity and giving a time to hard work and practice we can change our "talents" and "passions". I always hated this fancy "find your passion" credo and thanks to this course the scientific research proved that it it's a wrong approach. If you are not good at math, logic, or drawing - maybe you will not become Einstein, Bill Gates or Leonardado Da Vinci. But you definitely can master the foundation of this sciences(and far more) even without having a natural talent.

Not only did this course give me very practical strategies to more effectively learn as an adult (rather than beating my head against a wall), but it gave me new insights into brain development and learning strategies for my classrooms of younger students.

Barbara is an incredibly engaging speaker who breaks down concepts into easily processed segments...of course, for a scholar who dedicates herself to learning about learning, she is very easy to learn from! Terry is one of the most renowned neuroscientists in the world but surprisingly manages to translate his research into layman's terms without losing his enthusiasm.

I wouldn't mind retaking this course annually to brush up on the scientific research and dig more thoroughly into the supplemental materials!

I started studying this course back in 2017 when I was first year undergraduate student. I finished it in summer 2024 on my second year of graduate school. Somehow I always come back to this course when I have exams coming. I guess it's my way of procrastinating. However, every time I came back, I tried to go little bit further in my understanding of learning process. I find motivation in this lectures as they unveil that hardships that we all go through are very common. I enjoyed every video I watched and every test I took (although they could have been harder to be honest). I apply most of the techniques described in my everyday life. I would recommend this course to anyone, you will definitely find a lot of useful knowledge that you will practice daily.

The course was well structured and the Professor Barbara Oakley and Professor Terrance Sejnowski were so delightful to listening and learning from due to their powerful teaching skills. The exemples they used were very helpful and make easier to picture in my mind the concepts and ideas about the topics they addressed. I enjoyed the various techniques and also the information on how brain functions while we´re learning something new. I will certainly apply the techniques to improve my learning process. Another aspect that I did appreciate was the profuse amount of reading suggestions, which gives consistence to the course and provides us with more than one path to search for knowledge. Thank you so much for this wonderful journey of learning how to learn!

This course was my first course on Coursera and a fantastic way to start my new learning journey. As someone who recently finished my undergrad I wish I had taken this class earlier in my academic career. The clear connection between brain science and learning techniques truly illuminated for myself the flaws in my learning practices. However, the information also confirmed for me the strategies I was doing right in my learning and helped grow confidence in my learning style. I know the strategies i've learned in this course will help me learn the new skills I need to achieve personal growth and advance my career. Thank you Barbara Oakley for your enthusiasm and wonderful lectures, I looking forward to utilizing this knowledge for life-long learning.

-Arda