This is the second of the five steps of efficient learning that are outlined here

After you've completed the first of the 5 steps of efficient learning, Survey, it's time to acquire.

Here we're talking about acquiring the best information that will enable you to get to a point of understanding as quickly as possible. Two main ways this is going to happen.

  1. If you're in a live learning situation, such as at school or university or a conference, your acquisition is delivered straight to you (though you may need to supplement it with further info later on).
  2. If you're undertaking a personal learning project, acquisition following the survey step should be quite straight forward. From downloading relevant technology to buying the materials or visiting the websites that you've pinpointed to be most relevant.
Which of the four live learning scenarios is this one?
Which of the four live learning scenarios is this one?

In personal learning projects the acquisition quite naturally follows the survey, so I don't feel we need to spend much time discussing that, but for a live learning environment the distinction between the survey and the acquire steps can be a bit grey, so let's explore that in more detail.

The first thing to note here is that which of the steps a lecture covers really depends on both the quality of the lecturer and the difficulty of the subject. Quickly identifying which of these following situations you're in can greatly help you to learn efficiently. Consider the following Four Live Learning Scenarios.

  • Good lecturer, Easy subject-Awesome, the lecturer has already completed the survey step for you and distilled the key lessons that they're going to try to impart. Acquisition is also taken care of, they're delivering the key lessons in a format that's ideal. If the subject is easy enough (or your background knowledge is good enough) you may even be able to make it all the way through the understanding and even link steps in a single lecture if the conditions are optimum. Here you may even want to skip the lecture and watch it later fast forwarded in VLC media player to save you time.
  • Good lecturer, Hard subject-Ok, so the lecturer has distilled the lessons and is imparting them in a practical way but alas, you're struggling to take in any of the information. In this kind of situation you're best to use the lecture as just the survey step. Pay great attention to all of the topic headings and the way that the lecturer has ordered the information and linked different things together. Take comprehensive notes to give you the best opportunity to review the info later on and learn from what this great teacher had to say after the lesson. Another approach is to not actually attend the lesson but instead to use lesson recordings (if available). This will allow you to
  • Bad lecturer, Easy subject-This is pretty common. A lecturer takes some material that isn't too difficult and manages to confuse the whole class. In this situation don't try to use their classes for either the survey or the acquisition step. Just skip them. Do however stay in touch with someone from the class to try to get an idea of the kind of stuff that is going to be on the exam. You can also survey past exams to achieve the same ends. Do your own independent survey for relevant info (ask someone who's already completed that unit and try to get their notes) and try to find some good online tutorials.
  • Bad lecturer, Hard subject-this is very much similar to the ‘bad lecturer, easy subject situation'. The only difference is that it's now more important to try to identify what you're going to be tested on. Another key point is that it may be to your benefit to find a (good) tutor in this scenario. Tutors can help you to both survey and acquire. But if you do your survey first you'll be in a much better position to get the most out of your tutoring session. You're wasting your time and money if you rock up to your tutoring session with no idea of what you want to learn.

 Screen shot 2014-09-12 at 9.58.48 AMDespite the suggestions above of what you should/could do in each of the four live learning scenarios there will be times when it's just not possible for you to run away, despite the warning signs. This could be for a number of reasons such as

  • Attendance is compulsory
  • Learning materials aren't available elsewhere
  • You don't trust yourself to study independently so think you had better attend!**

In this kind of situation we need to bite the bullet and do the best we can with what we've got. And that requires one key skill. Note taking. See this article on my method of note taking before moving on to step 3, understand.

*this was the case with me for the first couple of years of university but eventually I came to the realisation that I'd be better off leaving if the lecturer was bad. After I did it once and worked out how much easier it was to teach myself the stuff there was no turning back!

**If this sounds like you then I suggest you try to nip this one in the bud quickly and sort it out. Check out this post on motivation to try to get better control in such situations.