Learning, Fast or Slow?
Exploring the benefits and challenges of intensive and extended learning.
Let’s say you want to learn coding. Would you benefit more from a 4-hour-per-week course spread over 4 months or an immersive 1-month full-time crash course?
Want to learn how to speak French? Is it wiser to start with 5 minutes a day Duolingo sessions or to dive headfirst into a 20-hour-a-week course for a month?
Lately, I've been weighing the benefits and drawbacks of intensive (fast) versus extended (slow) learning. With the surge of online education through MOOCs and numerous cohort-based courses, extended slow learning seems to have become the default.
What exactly does extended learning mean? In my view, it's when you dedicate 5 to 10 hours weekly to learning a particular subject or skill over several months.
I like this approach. However, I often find myself considering the alternatives and questioning the optimal route.
Fast vs slow learning for me
In university, we occasionally had visiting lecturers who'd condense an entire semester's content into intense full-day sessions spread over a few days. This contrasted with regular faculty who scheduled weekly classes over 16 weeks. The sheer energy, passion, and enjoyment of these condensed sessions were unmatched.
In 2021, I embarked on a 30-day doodling course comprising short video lessons, textual instructions, and practice tasks. It took me months to finish. I was lazy and there was no motivating factor to keep coming back on time.
Would compressing these 30 days into into an intense weekend of learning, followed by a month of practice be more effective?
This month I've also been attempting a Python course at EntryLevel—a course I actually helped design. Although familiar with its curriculum and having watched most videos, I wanted the student experience, including doing the assignments.
While the 6-week course expects students to commit 5-10 hours weekly, I'm convinced a motivated individual could tackle it over an intense week.
However, we structured the course to unlock modules on specific days, resulting in high completion rates. I attempted a weekend sprint, but my concentration wavered. After completing a module, I'd delay the next, thinking, "I'll tackle this next week."
Perhaps my dedication to the subject is lacking. Or maybe it's just procrastination. Or maybe I know it’s designed to be completed over 6 weeks and I should stick to that schedule?
Which approach is superior?
The easy answer is: it depends.
Research conducted by Raquel Serrano & Carmen Muñoz on foreign language education reveals that intensive language programs tend to produce better results. Students were put into three different programs running over different durations:
Extensive - 110 hours over 7 months (4 hours per week)
Semi-intensive - 110 hours over 3-4 months (8 to 10 hours per week)
Intensive - 110 hours over 5 weeks (more than 20 hours per week)
The results suggested that concentrating the hours of English instruction in shorter periods of time is more beneficial for the student’s learning than distributing them over many months.
But what about other domains?
To get an answer to what is superior, let’s look at the benefits and challenges of the two approaches:
Intensive Learning
Definition: Concentrated learning sessions with over 20 hours of learning per week.
Extended (Spaced) Learning:
Definition: Learning that's spread across an extended timeframe, such as weeks or months, with 4 to 8 hours of learning per week.
Both approaches have their own merits and challenges. Intensive learning can be particularly beneficial for a specific topic and may not work for another one.
And even with intensive learning, you don’t want to just learn quickly but retain the knowledge.
Barbara Oakley, in her widely acclaimed Coursera course "Learning How to Learn", delves into the advantages of both spaced repetition and focused bursts of learning. She suggests that while deep, immersive learning sessions can lead to quick mastery, it's the spaced repetition that often cements the knowledge (source).
So irrespective of the strategy you choose, it’s important to ensure that the information sticks.
Selecting your learning strategy
Here are a few tips to help you choose the correct strategy when designing your own learning:
Purpose of learning:
Why are you learning? If you're diving into a core skill essential for your job, intensive training may be best. But for add-on skills, a slower pace works well.
Say you've just landed a role at a budding startup as a product manager, and they anticipate your proficiency with design tools. While you're familiar, you aren't an expert. It might be wise to deeply immerse yourself in a tool like Figma to become indispensable.
On the other hand, if your goal is to comprehend frontend development for better communication with your tech team, a steady learning rhythm of a few hours each week should suffice.
Recognize the nature of the skill:
Is the skill better absorbed quickly or over time? Remember, intensity doesn't always equate to cramming everything into a few days.
Take swimming, for example. Consistent 1-hour sessions spread across several months could be more fruitful than swimming non-stop for 20 hours in a single week.
Life's commitments:
Your daily responsibilities shape how you learn. Juggling responsibilities at work and home? Short, consistent learning sessions might be more manageable.
But if you're a college student with a free summer, diving deep into an intensive course could be the answer.
For instance, I took a 3-day crash course on Stock Markets at BSE Institute in Mumbai during one of my summer holidays. Those dense three days made my subsequent semester in finance at uni a breeze.
Understanding how you learn:
We all process knowledge differently. While some flourish in total immersion, others benefit from periods of reflection and gradual absorption. Think about your past learning experiences and identify what works best for you.
Reflecting on my own experiences, from my university days to the digital courses of today, I've seen the value in both approaches.
But what stands out is the importance of alignment – with our goals, life circumstances, and innate learning styles.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Remember, the journey of learning is as significant as the destination.
Happy learning!