How to Learn Like A Pro

Study overview of the reviewed opening

Nissila’s welcome challenges the assumption that successful learning is simply a fixed personal advantage. The resource presents study as something that can be investigated and improved through deliberate practice. Its intended learners include new students, returning adults and people combining education with employment or family responsibilities.

The introduction connects effective learning with several kinds of work: managing time, setting goals, taking notes, reading critically, using memory techniques and preparing for examinations. Portfolio projects ask students to gather and reflect on strategies, rather than only complete a sequence of disconnected exercises. The stated outcomes also include monitoring progress and using library resources.

The instructor guidance describes a flexible course structure with unit overviews, lessons, activities and assessment rubrics. It links study skills with critical thinking and the ability to identify comprehension problems. This guide summarises the reviewed welcome and objectives, not the evidence for every psychological model discussed later. Readers should separate the resource’s practical activity design from claims about learning styles or brain models that would require their own source evaluation.

Book contents

1. Learn Like a Pro! Welcome to Effective Learning (EL115)--for Students and Instructors
2. Course Objectives and Outcomes
3. Acknowledgments
4. Unit 1 Overview--Learning Styles and Preferences; Unit Terms
5. Unit 2 Overview--Management of Time, Tools, and Study Environment; Unit Terms
6. Unit 3 Overview--College Level Critical Thinking and Reading; Unit Terms
7. Unit 4 Overview--Listening and Note-Taking; Unit Terms
8. Unit 5 Overview--Memory Principles and Techniques; Unit Terms
9. Unit 6 Overview--Test-Taking: Pre, Mid, and Post; Unit Terms
10. GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS for Reading/Writing Patterns

Questions for study

The following prompts are Academic Master’s editorial material.

• What evidence could show whether a study strategy helps you?
• How does a portfolio support reflection on learning?
• What differs between practising a technique and establishing a theory’s validity?

Sources and coverage

Welcome and Course Objectives and Outcomes read in full (PDF pages 7–11); contents checked.

Source edition · Source licence