Is Your Learning Laminar or Turbulent?
It was while I was assessing my disappointing results from last semester. I was disappointed but not surprised. It was one of those semesters where my confidence was higher than my competence, and I failed to notice things were slipping a little.
That's when I considered the idea that my studying had been laminar when perhaps it should have been turbulent.
Laminar flow occurs when a fluid moves slowly down a smooth pipe. Particles in the fluid run in straight parallel paths, and the fluid maintains all of its original consistency.
Turbulent flow occurs when the input pressure applied to the fluid is increased. It results in random sideways particle movements, which mixes up the particles and breaks the fluid up, shearing through the fluid to create a new consistency. Overall, the flow rate is higher than laminar flow, but by a smaller than expected amount, because of all the particles colliding with each other.
So could learning be seen this way?
Laminar learning would be slowly working through each part, without applying much effort. In the end, you would know the facts individually, but not thoroughly.
Turbulent Learning would be more aggressive - a high degree of effort (pressure) and doing small pieces of work (particles) across the whole syllabus would lead to ideas coming together and a deeper understanding (mixing). Progress would be slower than expected but still outpace the rate of laminar learning.
This isn't purely about working harder, but rather working on the whole syllabus and constantly pushing.
In practical terms, laminar learning equates to just watching the lectures, whereas turbulent learning equates to immersing oneself in the tutorials, assignments and feedback, deliberately emulsifying all the course material together.
I'm going to go mix it up with my current courses right now...
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