Musings on Learning and Teaching Revit

Stipulations To Take Onboard:
Learning ultimately comes from within oneself.

Biologically we remember limited stimuli by filtering out most of what our senses pickup.
For instance, the things our unconscious mind feels unnecessary.What I find equally interesting is there is no such thing as “now” in the context. Meaning that when any stimulus is received, the filtering is not instantaneous. There are latencies from fractions of a second, up to a few seconds, and more. Interesting but a digression. 😉

Let’s imagine my stipulation

Learning ultimately comes from within oneself. Does the extrapolation that the student is really their own teacher hold any weight? I think it does in a strange way. And, there is a good deal of sound research on the subject. Perhaps not so not strange after all.
As educators, especially of technologies, we want our content to be understood by the students. One way to achieve such a goal is to have them buy into one thing. “They will need to share, or teach, their knowledge to others.” Look up the research. Maybe start with this AUGI article —  “Learning Through Teaching and Managing It All: A Revit Autodidact in Practice.” (Some good Revit learning there). 🙂

It’s fair to say most people in the AECO industry have heard, read, seen, or even been a capital-T “Teacher.” It is likewise safe to say we learn in those situations (no matter whose brain it happens in), teachers inspire learning while learning comes from teaching. Teaching is both internal and external, to teacher and student, whoever we are at any given moment.

Ok, now we know we teach ourselves at a fundamental level based on a myriad of factors, all filtered in our brains. It is also obvious that we cannot take everything onboard.

Q: If we can’t learn everything educators or situations, etc. have to offer, how can we accelerate and grow our capacities for learning?

A: By teaching.

Teaching forces acknowledgement that comprehension must be attained in order to properly communicate the ideas to the intended audience.
-Andrew Fastman, AIA, LEED AP BD+C 

The Mind is a Busy Place

We don’t want to have the concepts absorbed with our short term “working memory” time frames either. Why bother since short term memory usually measures 10-15 seconds up to about a minute. No, we intend to have our concepts consumed into others’ long term memory. Which raises the question: How? How do we teach for greatest impact? How do we learn for greatest impact?

Try going into a situation on the foundation that you will be teaching it later. The situation can be any event including meetings, classes, conversations, etc.

At the physical level of human memory, the concepts are simple enough (yeah right, lol) — encoding stimuli into constructs and using perceptions filtered via attention. Memorable events elicit more prefrontal brain activity. Stimulate that.

I think this is where the secret of learning everything lays, but how to excite those pesky neurons to learn Revit? The first (or really next) action is to read the linked article and remember.

You Will Be Teaching It.

Happy Learning,
Jz 😉