Explore—understand content#

The next step in the learning process is to explore your topic and the material you’ve collected. Your goal is to understand the topic, rather than just rote learn it. A fundamental learning principle underlies exploration. If you learn something in more depth up front, you remember it for longer.

Learning material by rote sometimes appears easier. You could learn some topics faster by rote compared to trying to understand the details behind the topic. However, this typically results in slower overall learning for two reasons.

Firstly, if you forget part of the topic learned by rote, you have little to help you recall it. If you understand the underlying ideas, it’s more likely you can rebuild parts of the topic in your mind. Consider a mathematical formula. If you only rote learn it, you may forget whether to add or subtract some item in the formula. If you understand the theory behind the formula, it’s more likely you can work out whether to add or subtract.

Secondly, it’s less likely you can apply a topic in a slightly different way if you only rote learn it. If you learn the details behind a topic, you have more opportunity to work out what you need to change to apply the topic differently. For example, understanding some details behind aircraft navigation makes it easier to apply the same knowledge to maritime navigation.

You can explore at many levels. When you first start your training, you explore the overall course content and understand how each lower level module contributes to the overall objectives. As you progress, you then explore each part in more detail. Both the high and low-level details form part of your understanding of a topic.

Many techniques and tools can help you explore your content. In this section, we first look at some general techniques you can apply to any exploration activity. Then I present more techniques grouped (roughly) into the most relevant Memletic Style. We are yet to cover these styles in detail, so you may want to review the basics of each style in the Overview chapter. In summary, the styles are Visual, Aural, Verbal, Physical, Logical, Social and Solitary learning styles.

Here is a summary of the exploration techniques described in this section:

General exploration

• High altitude view
• Deeper level
• Branch wider
• Abstractions
• Bottom up
• Questions³

Visual exploration

• Diagrams, graphs, and sketches
• Mind maps
• Systems diagrams
• Visualization

Aural exploration

• Sound focus
• Record sounds

Verbal exploration

• Lectures and discussions
• Dramatic reading
• Express and summarize aloud
• Write and rewrite
• Write articles
• Write summaries
• Record

Physical exploration

• Walk about
• Get hands-on
• Role-playing
• Index cards & Post-It notes
• Tick it off

Logical exploration

• Logic analysis—OSAID
• Logic trees
• Play with numbers

Social exploration

• Group learning
• Study buddy
• Opposite view
• Role-play
• Involve others

Solitary exploration

• Reaction notes
• Learning journal or log
• People exploration
• Make up your own mind

How far should you go when exploring your material? It depends on your objectives. If you want to know a particular topic well, you may want to explore it in more detail than a course mandates. Don’t go too far though. If you find yourself analyzing the behavior of electrons in water molecules, and how that contributes to a landscape photograph, you have probably gone too far!

For techniques that improve the speed of reading — fluency drills, skim reading, vocabulary building — see the Speed Reading section.