Focus on the process (the way you spend your time) instead of the product (what you want to accomplish.)
Dr Barb Oakley is an accomplished and current professor of engineering at Oakland University. Her work focuses on the complex relationship between neuroscience and social behaviour. She has published in outlets as varied as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Her research has been described as “revolutionary” in the Wall Street Journal.
Current Work:
Barb is the author of the New York Times international best-seller, A Mind for Numbers, and creator of one of the world's most successful online courses: Learning How to Learn, with millions of students worldwide. Barb's forte is providing practically useful insights from neuroscience that leverage learners' abilities:
- Learn why it's��s perfectly normal to not understand something difficult the first time it's encountered. See why knowledge of how the brain works can help improve test scores and protect against feelings of frustration and failure when something seems too difficult to learn.
- See what the patterns of expertise look like in the brain, and learn how to build those patterns more quickly and with less frustration.
- Discover simple tools to tackle procrastination. (You might be surprised to learn that even just thinking about something you don't like causes your brain to experience pain.)
- Learn the surprising advantages of having a bad memory and being a slower learner.
Dr. Oakley's humorous approach makes every presentation a treat—as such, she is an international speaker of wide renown. In Barb's skilled hands, in-depth neuroscience becomes easy to picture and understand. Her academic background as both a linguist and professor of engineering—not to mention her broad-ranging experiences as a radio operator at the South Pole Station in Antarctica, her work as a Russian translator aboard Soviet trawlers on the Bering Sea, and her service as a US Army officer—mean that she's able to reach and inspire people from all walks of life.
Previous Experience:
Universities: Dr. Oakley has headlined and given workshops on learning and online learning at institutions such as Harvard; Princeton; Yale; the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil; Kyoto University and the University of Tokyo in Japan; Macquarie University, UTS, and UWA in Australia; Uninorte and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia; LUMS and the Aga Khan University in Pakistan, and dozens more.
Businesses:
Barb has keynoted and provided workshops for institutions such as Microsoft, the Financial Times, MetLife, Hitchwood Capital Management, the InterAmerican Development Bank, Telefonica, and many more.
Conferences: Barb is a popular speaker as well for learning and edtech conferences—she's headlined at venues as diverse as ASU-GSV, Moscow's EdCrunch, and Brazil's FIRE. In Australia, she has keynoted for the Queensland Secondary School Principal's Association conference. In Boston in Nov, 2019, she'll be giving the opening keynote for the Harvard-MIT-Dana Alliance “Science of Learning” conference, one of the world's leading conferences on neuroscience and education.
K-12: Dr. Oakley has also provided professional development for K-12 schools around the world who are interested in upgrading their teacher training to align with the latest, practically useful findings from neuroscience.
Talking Points
Learning How to Learn: Powerful Mental Tools to Help You Master Tough Subjects. (60 Minute Keynote)
Professor of Engineering and linguist Barbara Oakley, is the instructor of Learning How to Learn (University of California-San Diego Coursera), one of the world's largest student massive open online course, with over two million students. In this presentation, she will show you present useful information about how you can more easily master new and difficult material. Learning How to Learn: Powerful Mental Tools to Help You Master Tough Subjects. (60 Minute Keynote)
- Learn why it's perfectly normal to not understand something difficult the first time its encountered. You'll see how knowledge of how the brain works can help improve test scores and protect against feelings of frustration and failure when something seems difficult to learn.
- See what the patterns of expertise look like in the brain, and learn how to build those patterns more quickly and with less frustration.
- Discover simple tools to tackle procrastination. (You might be surprised to learn that even just thinking about something you don't like causes your brain to experience pain.)
- Learn the surprising advantages of having a bad memory and sometimes being a slower learner.
Dr. Oakley's previous book, A Mind for Numbers, is a New York Times and international best-seller translated into over a dozen languages. Her most recent book is the popular Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens.
How Neuroscience Is Changing What We Know about Learning: Practical Insights for Instructors (75 minute Keynote)
Instructors often have a feel for what they're supposed to be teaching in the classroom. But they often don't know why. This keynote will provide practical insights, using recent light microscopy imagery and neural animations, about how the brain learns. By seeing the restrictions of working memory, you'll gain a better idea of how to structure teaching to avoid student cognitive overload. And by understanding the changes that good teaching can make in students' brains, you'll gain a better idea of how to help students neurally encode information, concepts, and techniques into long-long term memory”the essence of learning. How Neuroscience Is Changing What We Know about Learning: Practical Insights for Instructors (75 minute Keynote)
Barbara Oakley is the instructor of the world's most popular massive open online course, Learning How to Learn, as well as other popular courses for Coursera-UCSD-McMaster.
How Neuroscience Is Changing What We Know about Learning: Practical Insights for Instructors (6.5 hour workshop)
Instructors often have a feel for what they're supposed to be teaching in the classroom. But they often don't know why. This workshop will provide practical insights, using recent light microscopy imagery and neural animations, about how the brain learns. By seeing the restrictions of working memory, for example, you'll gain a better idea of how to structure teaching to avoid student cognitive overload. And by understanding the changes that good teaching can make in students' brains, you'll gain a better idea of how to help students neurally encode information, concepts, and techniques into long-long term memory”the essence of learning. This in-depth information, accompanied by active exercise will help you fine tune your approach to effective teaching.How Neuroscience Is Changing What We Know about Learning: Practical Insights for Instructors (6.5 hour workshop)
We'll also cover advice for frequent problem areas for students such as procrastination, lack of focus, and lack of motivation. We will then move to a more theoretical framework to discuss issues such as the effect size of different instructional interventions; biologically primary versus biologically secondary material and the relationship of these materials with student versus teacher centered learning; how to sniff out educational fads; and the role of learning individual facts in allowing the hippocampus (and students!) to develop a feel for overall patterns.
Professor Barbara Oakley is the instructor of the world's most popular massive open online course, Learning How to Learn, and is the author of the New York Times best-selling book A Mind for Numbers.
Meta-Learning: Practical Insights from Neuroscience for You and Your Business Clients
Learning agility and the ability to focus efficiently are vitally important in today's fast-paced business environment. This talk gives practical insights into learning that can allow you and your clients to learn more quickly and deeply while remaining emotionally agile in the face of stress. Barbara Oakley is the instructor of the world's most popular massive open online course, Learning How to Learn, as well as other popular courses on learning and business settings for Coursera through University of California, San Diego, McMaster, and Arizona State University.
Meta-Learning: Practical Insights from Neuroscience for You and Your Business Clients
Lessons from a Basement Studio: How to Create Successful Educational Videos
This workshop describes one instructor's personal experience in creating what is now widely recognized as the world's largest massive open online course: Learning How to Learn: Powerful Mental Tools to Help You Master Tough Subjects. We will cover the key elements behind the making of high quality educational videos for MOOCs, including scripting, filming, editing, the use of metaphor, the importance of motion, the value of chunking� of key concepts; and why humor is so critically important in online learning. We'll also have time for questions about your own work, or planned work, in the online world.
Lessons from a Basement Studio: How to Create Successful Educational Videos
Video
Learning how to learn | Barbara Oakley | TEDxOaklandUniversity
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Engineering professor Barbara Oakley is co-teaching one of the world's largest online classes, She know firsthand how it feels to struggle with math. Dr. Oakley flunked her way through high school math and science courses, before enlisting in the U.S. Army immediately after graduation. When she saw how her lack of mathematical and technical savvy severely limited her optionsboth to rise in the military and to explore other careersshe returned to school with a new found determination to re-tool her brain to master the very subjects that had given her so much trouble throughout her entire life.
