Being good at learning is an obvious benefit when you are a student. It also is a skill that will help you in life and in your career well after you leave Portland State. This page provides links to resources that will help you be a better learner.

Disclaimer: There are no shortcuts to learning. Real learning takes work. The information on this page is intended to help you use your study effort more effectively.

• Lecture slides on becoming an expert student
• Barbara Oakley's 10 Rules of Good and Bad Studying
• Read the Excerpt from "How to become a straight-A student" by Cal Newport. Scroll down the page to start at “Excerpt”.
• Maryelen Weimer's 7-Characteristics-of-Good-Learners.pdf via Concordia University, Wisconsin. The original article is behind a paywall.
• The Farnam Street blog has a good summary of Carol Dweck's book on growth mindset.
• The Farnam Street blog also has a summary and list of references on what they call accelerated learning. These ideas apply to any subject that you commit to mastering.

• Barbara Oakley's TEDx talk on Learning How to Learn
• Brian Johnson's video summary of Cal Newport's book, "How to become a straight-A student"
  Note: You can skip the last 1.5 minutes of the video which are an advertisement for an on-line course.

If and when you have more time, you may want to consult the following resources for more information on, and practice with, becoming an expert learner.

• Barbara Oakley's book, A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even if you flunked algebra)
  This is the reference book for the Coursera course, Learning How to Learn
• Cal Newport's How to Become a Straight-A Student
  The subtitle is The unconventional strategies real college students use to score high while studying less
• Free Coursera Course on Learning How to Learn.
  This course covers much of the material in Oakley's A Mind For Numbers book
• Ericsson and Pool, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
  This is a recent book that may be in paperback by the time you click the link.