Blog Post #1

About Me

Hello,

My name is Marcos Castellanos-Thammavong, I am a 5th year Philosophy Major at UVic. I’ve had many experiences along my educational journey as a learner, but one major experience that always sticks out to me, is the process of a Socratic seminar. This is a discussion/learning style that allows active engagement from all participants in a class or any other group of learners. A lot of my political science and Philosophy classes had engaged in this style of teaching from time to time, and I have always enjoyed it. The process allows all members of the discussion to engage in thought-provocation, a lot of the time, you will retain the information given a lot better due to the thought-provoking nature of the discussion.

My Understanding of Learning

My understanding of learning is probably quite the same as many other students. I believe that learning starts with the instructor, they are well-versed in the topic at hand, shares their information to the learners, and the learners take that knowledge and apply it to themselves. For my major specifically, learning is bit less streamlined, as we are given the viewpoints of many different philosophers, current or historical, but once we learn of their line of thinking and their reasonings for it, we are then, usually, asked to critique their theory, and finally if we agree with it or not. Its a very new way of teaching that hadn’t really been taught to me during my grade school years, but I really enjoy it. One example of when I learned something very effectively, was when I was actually trying to teach my friend a concept in class. It was I think my 12th grade pre-calculus class, my friend had missed a day of school for being sick, and he asked me about a new equation that we had learned while he was away, I knew what it was, but I had a bit of trouble explaining it to him. I went back into my notes and started sharing the way I thought that it had worked, and by the end, he knew how to do the equation, and I had a much better understanding of that equation. From that point on, I have tried to recreate that study method as best I could (which I now know to be the Feynman Technique), by sort of role-playing the part of the educator when I am trying to study, with the help of friends as the learners.

Confidence in Learning

An element that I have always thought is the most important when it comes to learning is confidence; when I have confidence in a certain subject, I feel that I can be an effective learner. This comes in many forms, and not just from within, when the educator helps the learner feel confident in what they are learning, it can do wonders for their learning capability and their comprehension of the material. When a learner is able to be confident in their abilities, most of the time they will succeed. Take a road test for example, if you do not have confidence when you are participating in this test, you are more prone to making mistakes and second-guessing yourself, but you are reinforced with confidence, to be confident in yourself and your abilities, you are much more likely to succeed.

Past Knowledge in Learning

A big part of learning is having past knowledge to reinforce new material that you will be learning. This is not just with empirical facts, like you have to know this certain formula to be able to do another, that’s rhetorical, but more so, the past experience that comes with learning, the trials and tribulations that have led you to this point. These past experiences can help you tremendously with learning new content, even if they are completely unrelated topic-wise; the same methods that you have used to study in other courses can aide you in studying for others. An example that I always look back on with my prior knowledge is when I was studying for my finals in 1st year. There was a theorem that I had been trying to wrap my head around the whole semester, but despite the countless office hours I attended, and the numerous questions asked during class time, I still couldn’t get the hang of it. What really aided my in finally understanding this theorem was the study method that I had mentioned earlier, even though I was struggling with a philosophy class, and this method I had found out in my pre-calculus class, it still worked in the same way to help me learn.