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What are Learning Strategies and why are they important?

A learning strategy is a method that someone uses to learn. Any time you've deliberately tried to learn something, you've made a decision about the best way to do it. In other words, you've used learning strategies.

Just because you already use strategies does not mean you don't have to think about them anymore, though. It's important to reflect on and adjust your strategies regularly for several reasons.

You need to be more strategic to succeed in university and the workplace

As people mature, they take on more responsibility for what, when, and how they learn. They become increasingly self-directed, in other words, and need to use a wider range of strategies to manage their learning choices [expand for more information].

Self-directed learners are those who can:

identify their own learning needs and develop goals
develop a plan to meet their learning goals, including choosing which resources to consult and who to ask for help
choose how to approach each part of the plan and monitor their progress (metacognition)
determine when they have met their goals

The process of becoming more self-directed is not always a smooth one. Many people experience significant jumps in the amount of responsibility they need to take on for their own learning when they start university and enter the workforce.

Academics

University students need to be more self-directed than they were in high school because they:

spend more time learning outside of class
have fewer opportunities for feedback through exams and assignments

Because they spend less time in class, university students need to independently identify what they need to learn, decide how they will learn it (including the people and resources they will consult), and monitor their progress. They also need to be able to evaluate when they have learned something well enough to meet their goals since they will receive less guidance and confirmation from their instructors. In short, university students need to be more strategic than they were in high school because they are managing more of their own learning.

Career

Given the rate at which new information arises, technology changes, and organizations evolve, people who know how to learn new things effectively and efficiently have a distinct advantage in the workplace. Self-directed learning is therefore a key professional skill. Developing a stronger set of strategies now will not only help you in university, it will also help you prepare for your chosen career path.

Self-Directed LearningVideo - OnRamps

How Different Are College and High School? (Hint: Very)

Article - College Info Geek

The Revolution of Self-Directed Learning

Video - Sean Bengry / TEDxFlourCity

Strategies need to be adapted for new situations, like learning online

Learning strategies are context-specific in that they need to be a good fit for you, what you are learning, and your learning environment. A study technique that works well for a sociology class may not work for a chemistry class, for example, and a method that works for your classmate may not work for you. Likewise, the strategies you use to study for in-person courses may not be the best ones for online courses [expand for more].

This isn't to say that online classes require an entirely new set of strategies; but they do require you to adjust your methods for your new context. Factors like:

having a more variable schedule because of asynchronous elements
learning from home instead of in a classroom
taking exams online instead of on paper
less immediate interaction with instructors and classmates

change what you need to do to learn effectively.

Online Learning Basics (1).pdf

Online Learning Basics

Handout - CUE Learning Services

Online Classes: A Survival Guide

Video - Thomas Frank

Success Strategies for Online Courses

Screencast Series - Simon Fraser University

Many people unknowingly rely on counterproductive strategies

Another reason to regularly reflect on your learning strategies is to catch when you are using ones that don't actually work. This is harder than it may seem because how we evaluate our learning and the effectiveness of our strategies is often influenced by incorrect beliefs about learning and inaccurate perceptions of our own learning processes [expand to learn more]:

Inaccurate beliefs about learning

Throughout our lives, we pick up ideas about how people learn that are incorrect, even if they feel like common sense. When we use those ideas to inform our learning strategies, we can end up using ones that don't actually help us even if we think they are.

Faulty metacognition or perceptions of our own learning

Our perception of the world around us is influenced by many things, including cognitive biases. Our perception of our own mental processes and learning can be shaped by our biases as well. One of the biggest biases that relates to learning strategies is the fluency illusion, which happens when we become so familiar with a piece of information (perhaps by reading it several times) that we feel we know it when we really just recognize it. A prime example of the fluency illusion at work is when you study for an exam and feel ready, then start the test and "go blank." In most cases, the problem isn't your memory, it's that you were mistaken about how well you had learned the material in the first place.

It's therefore important to regularly reflect on the strategies you use and consider whether they are really helping you learn more effectively. Part of being a more strategic learner also means choosing strategies that can help you get a more accurate picture of your progress. The first step for doing that is being more aware of your current habits and assumptions about learning, which will be covered in the next section.