Companion presentation videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7zPcraYKbGCAfjUfZnqxwya86jUWSrC2 Every student is in college to learn something that will help them live a better life. The sad reality is that most students have never been taught how the brain actually learns. Why not use our understanding of the human brain to make sure that you study better, learn smarter, and increase the odds that you achieve your dreams.

1. The Learning Brain
Dr. Frank O’Neill
Frank@OnlineTeacherYOUniversity.com
GrowGrayMatter on Twitter and Linkedin
OnlineTeacherYOUniversity on Facebook and YouTube
www.OnlineTeacherYOUniversity.com

2. All images in the presentation are from Pixabay. No attribution is required
www.pixabay.com

3. Why are YOU Here?
“Learning HOW to learn is
life’s most important skill.”
-Tony Buzan

4. Why are YOU Here?
• You want a better life!
• You want to be a LEARNER instead
of a STUDENT
• You want 1 + 1 to equal 3

5. Why are YOU Here?
• How you learned in high school will not
work here
• Most people are never taught about how
the brain actually learns new material
• What does brain science have to teach us
about learning and memory?

6. Why am I Here?
“The task of the excellent instructor is to stimulate “apparently
ordinary” people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not to
identify winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary* people.”
-K. Patricia Cross
*1 x 102,685,000
“If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need
motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him
around.”
-Jim Rohn

7. What does it mean to LEARN???
“Education aims to give you a boost up the ladder of knowledge. Too
often, it just gives you a cramp on one of its rungs.”
-Martin H. Fischer
• Has something ever stuck in your brain?
• If you can learn SOMETHING, you can learn ANYTHING!

8. What does it mean to LEARN???
• What does it mean to learn something???
• Intake
• Consolidate
• Retrieve
• Learning is a puzzle, and CRAMMING doesn’t fit

9. Learning is as “Easy” as Pie
Intake
80%
Consolidate
15%
Retrieval
5%
TRYING TO LEARN

10. Learning is as “Easy” as Pie
Intake
34%
Consolidate
33%
Retrieval
33%
LEARNING

11. How can I Improve the INTAKE?
• Don’t leave before this talk is over!!!
• Learn SMARTER not HARDER
• Become an ACTIVE learner
• Lay a solid foundation/First things First

12. How can I Improve the INTAKE?
• Know when to go a mile DEEP, and
when to go a mile WIDE
• Deliberate practice versus 3 B’s mode
• Pondering as a form of meditation

13. How can I improve CONSOLIDATION?
• Your working memory won’t work
• The enemy of consolidation is
procrastination
• Practice doesn’t make perfect!
• Consolidation takes TIME and SLEEP
• Move your downloads into your Dropbox

14. How can I improve RETRIEVAL?
• Just do it!
• Is it Test Anxiety or a Retrieval Deficiency?

15. Learning style, schmearning style
• Learning preferences are real. Learning styles are not
• They are more anchors than sails
• What is the best learning style for this content at this time?

16. If Learning is EASY you are doing it WRONG
• I am here to teach you the HARD way to study that will make your
classes EASY
• I was a great student, but a bad learner
• Give me a hard working C student any day

17. If Learning is EASY you are doing it WRONG
• My job is to accelerate your development by allowing you to learn
from your mistakes
• But wait, aren’t mistakes bad?!?

18. Mistakes are a part of Learning
“If you can’t make a mistake, you can’t make anything.”
-Marva Collins
• Rule number 1 in my classroom
• Secret to Success: Fail FAST and Fail FORWARD

19. Mistakes are a part of Learning
• You can’t learn from mistakes if you aren’t making any!
• Good “Students” want to look smart. Good LEARNERS want to be
smart
• Mistakes are opportunities to grow, learn, and improve
• You didn’t fail. You now know something that doesn’t work 

20. How do I Fail Forward?
• Fail at the right time
• Do you want to be frustrated today or during
the exam?
• Fast feedback (know which bone to bone up
on)
• Test corrections are essential!
• What did I do wrong, and how can I not do it
again?
• The worst mistake is the one you make twice

22. Spaced Practice
“Whatever we plant in our subconscious
mind and nourish with repetition and
emotion will one day become a reality.”
-Earl Nightingale

23. Spaced Practice
• Train your mind the way an athlete trains their muscles
• How many weights do you lift today?

24. Spaced Practice
• Nerves develop connections
with repeated use. The more
difficult it is for you to make
connections the more often you
must try
• Neurons that fire together wire
together
• Grow a neural scaffold a little
every day to hang your thinking
on
• Let the paint dry before you add
another layer or start hanging
up your photos

25. Spaced Practice
• How is your memory a lot like your blood sugar?
• You shouldn’t “cram” a soda or “chug” your learning

26. Spaced Practice
• You must visit a short term memory several times to move it to long
term
• Spaced repetition gives your brain the time and practice it needs to
move memories into long term storage

27. Spaced Practice
• Spaced repetition isn’t hard, but overcoming procrastination is
• 5 hours spread out over 2 weeks is way more effective than 5 hours at
once
1 + 1 = 3
2 = 2
4 = 2
• If you create small spaces you can do a little bit over time and reap a
lot of reward

28. Retrieval Practice
“We learn more by looking for the
answer to a question and not finding
it than we do from learning the
answer itself.”
-Lloyd Alexander

29. Retrieval Practice
• It is easy to make yourself THINK you know anything
• Recognizing something and actually remembering it are NOT the
same thing
• Is this the root of most Test Anxiety?

30. Retrieval Practice
• Don’t just put information into your head, practice pulling it out
• Forgetting helps you remember
• The retrieval process enhances deep learning by building neural
hooks that we can hang our thinking and new info on

31. Retrieval Practice
• If we know this works, why don’t people do it?
• These techniques are shockingly powerful, BUT…
• They feel like they don’t work because they are HARD
• I want you to feel BAD about your progress

32. Retrieval Practice
For these techniques to work you MUST:
• Overcome Procrastination
• Learn how to Focus
• Get used to being Frustrated*

33. Retrieval Practice
• Stretch your boundaries without snapping
• Neural hooks help you fit new knowledge onto existing knowledge.
You don’t have that framework when you first get started
• It WILL get easier!

34. Retrieval Practice
• Is all this work really worth it?
• I would rather you remember 30% forever than 90% for 16 weeks
• Do you want today to be easy or the day of the final exam to be easy?
• Dropping bombs in practice doesn’t matter!

35. Retrieval Practice
How do I do it?
• What do you know with your book CLOSED?
• How many times have you tested yourself on
this knowledge before the test?
• Don’t forget to check for accuracy after
retrieval practice. Fix any gaps and mistakes
in your understanding

36. Retrieval Practice
• Find as many ways as you can to check you understanding and test
yourself
• The struggle to remember is the key
• After you have gone over material, look away and see what you can
recall. What was the big idea? Why does it matter?
• How would you explain this concept to a novice?
• What did you learn in school today?
• Organize your notes after class, but wait a day to review them. Let
some forgetting happen

37. Retrieval Practice
• Use flash cards, and use them correctly
• Don’t cheat yourself when you are studying
• Study both sides of a flash card
• Shuffle them
• These can be physical or digital flash cards (Anki, etc)
• Study test reviews the same way

38. Retrieval Practice
• Take practice quizzes. If you can’t find them, make them
• Trade practice exam questions with your friends

39. Retrieval Practice
• Fill in as many blanks as possible
• Turn your notes into fill in the blank notes
• Print multiple copies of assignments and reviews (Sorry trees)
• Start with a blank slate whenever possible

40. Retrieval Practice
• Try a brain dump
• It shows you what you know, and more importantly what you don’t

41. Spaced Retrieval Practice = 𝐿𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔2
• Spaced Retrieval Flash Cards are my FAVORITE study technique
• Combine things you learned a day ago, a week ago, and a month ago
• Study things you know well less often
• Turn weaknesses into strengths
• BUT, there is NEVER a never pile

42. Amplification
“You don’t understand anything
until you learn it more than one
way.”
-Marvin Minsky

43. Amplification
• How can you get more impact out of every minute you learn?
• You must USE what you are learning
• Memorizing a fact without a context or application makes it hard for
your brain to take it out of working memory and make it fit with other
concepts you are learning or have learned
• You may “know” something, but do you understand it, or do you
know how what to do with it?

44. Amplification
The best way to learn is to TEACH
“To teach is to learn twice.” –Joseph Joubert
What can Charlotte Mason teach you about active recall?
Narration Study Sessions
My goal is to teach families whether they like it or not 

45. Amplification
Talk to your 5 year-old self :
• Constantly ask yourself HOW and WHY
• What does this really mean?
• Why does it matter?
• How does it really work?
• How do I know this is true?

46. Amplification
Mine deeper:
• Look for similarities and differences
• How does todays material help solve a problem, explain a disease
state, connect to something that you are interested in? How can we
use today’s content to make the world a better place?
• This is why I LOVE Case Studies!
• What do I already know that can help me learn this content better?

47. Amplification
Mine deeper:
• What is something that you are learning
or struggling with in another class that
relates to this class?
• Why is this significant? What would
happen to the human body if this went
wrong?
• What else do I need to know to make
more sense of this stuff?

48. Amplification
Mine deeper:
• Can I think of a good analogy or example for this concept?
• Can I make a drawing that explains this concept?
• Can I weave everything I have learned so far into one big story?
• WARNING: Make connections to other material in any way that is
useful, not any way that you can

49. Enemies of Learning
• Enemy number 1 is Procrastination
• 1A is Distraction
• 2 is lack of Sleep
• 3 is lack of Exercise
• 4 is Stress
• 5 is lack of Time
• 6 is Poor Nutrition

50. Your Brain on Exercise
• Number 1 way to improve short and long term brain health
• Expands working memory
• Enhances the brain cells you already have
• Increases number of new brain cells
• What you do with them is up to you

51. Why does Exercise Help?
• BDNF (Brain Compost)
• Stress reduction
• Better sleep
• Puts brain in 3 B’s mode

52. Stress and the Brain
• Cortisol is the enemy of learning
• The ANTI-Exercise
• Shrinks Hippocampus
• Decreases new brain cell production

53. Sleep and the Brain
• Being tired makes you worse at EVERYTHING you do
• Your Brain cleans up Toxins (AND IDEAS) while you Sleep
• Sleep allows you to get out of your brains way while it makes sense of
information
• SLEEP ON IT

54. Sleep and the Brain
• U of MN Dr. Kyla Wahlstrom surveyed 7,000 HS kids. Teens who
receive A’s average 15 minutes more sleep than B students, who
averaged 15 minutes more sleep than C students. Even 15 minutes
counts
• Dr. Avi Sadeh at Tel Aviv University compared 4th and 6th graders,
and found that sleeping one hour less per night created a bigger
intelligence gap than the difference between a normal 4th grader and
6th grader

55. Sleep and the Brain
• Dr. Sadeh also found that even just shifting
when you sleep on the weekends has an
impact. Every hour of weekend shift costs
a kid 7 IQ points
• Dr. Paul Suratt at the U of Virginia found
the same 7 point IQ drop. He said “Sleep
disorders can impair children’s IQ as much
as lead exposure”

56. Sleep and the Brain
• Reduced sleep duration is related to a partial shutdown of the
prefrontal cortex, which makes it very hard to pay attention
• Drunk without the fun
• A paper published in 2015 showed that poor sleep diminishes your
ability to intentionally focus on voluntary things (like your teacher or
textbook or spouse) while enhancing your focus on involuntary things
(sniffles, keyboard typing, flickering light, people walking by door)
• If we need to use our attention when we are tired, it appears to pull
resources from our ability to control our behavior and be in a good
mood (HALT)

57. Why do we Procrastinate?
• Your brain craves INSTANT
gratification
• Goal is survival 5 seconds at a
time
• Dopamine says seek pleasure,
avoid pain
• Donut versus Diabetes
• Social media versus Studying

58. Why do we Procrastinate?
• Temporal Motivation Theory is the educational equivalent of
optimum foraging strategy
• Solution is to make the goal in front of you less painful and more
pleasurable
• Set goals your brain can agree with
• Short-term, medium term, and long term rewards
• Don’t save all of the dopamine for graduation day 

59. Why do we Procrastinate?
Goal Setting:
• The steeper the mountain, the
more basecamps there should be
• How do you eat an elephant?
• What can you master today???
• Rewards are SUPER important!

60. Why do we Procrastinate?
Planning:
• The number 1 problem with procrastination is that you can’t space
out your learning
• Eat your Frogs First

61. Why do we Procrastinate?
• How many nights will I have to sleep on this information?
• Don’t ask how long can I wait to get started
• There is no such thing as a “5 minute job”

62. Why do we Procrastinate?
Build yourself some breathing room:
• Get ahead weekend
• Finish line weekend

63. Why do we Procrastinate?
Make the Juice worth the Squeeze:
• Keep the Dopamine flowing!
• Pomodoro rewards
• End of study session rewards
• Weekly rewards, etc, etc
• Choose a graduation reward you can look forward to
• If incentives won’t work, try disincentives

64. Why do we Procrastinate?
Who can help hold you accountable?
• Study partner
• Teacher
• Family
• Yourself
• Your future self

65. Why do we Procrastinate?
What can you do to make it easy to study and hard to skip it?
• The learning version of running shoes by your bed
• I can’t do BLANK until I do BLANK
• Distraction proof your study environment
• Distraction free devices

66. The Distraction Disaster
“What we hope ever to do with
ease, we must learn first to do
with diligence.”
-Samuel Johnson

67. The Distraction Disaster
• Do you do real studying or fake studying?
• Are you a “multitasker”?

68. The Distraction Disaster
Focus:
• The goal is to have every brain cell pointing in the same direction
• Do you want JOY or momentary happiness?
• Concentration is a lost art in a distracting world

69. The Distraction Disaster
• Make your big mental purchases when there is “money in the bank”
• Pomodoro’s when you are fresh
• What can you save for when your brain is TOAST?

70. The Distraction Disaster
• Minimize distractions in class and your study areas
• Schedule your distractions
• Do you like Twitter more than your family or your future?

71. The Power of the Pomodoro

72. The Power of the Pomodoro
• How would you like to learn 3-4 times faster???
• Turn yourself into Pavlov’s Dog
• Oh goody, I GET to study!!!
• You can’t conquer your courses today, but you can win the next 25
minutes!
• Pomodoro keeps you from thinking too big for your caveman brain

73. The Power of the Pomodoro
Getting started:
• Think of it like meditation (victory in the effort)
• Start small
• 90 minutes victory versus 120 minute defeat
• Cleanse your palate

74. The Power of the Pomodoro
Is 25 minutes Magic?
Should I stop if I am cruising?
Better to stop a little too early rather than a little too late

75. The Power of the Pomodoro
The power is in the “reset”:
The rewarding break is CRITICAL, not OPTIONAL
Your break should use different parts of your brain, or no parts at all 
Walk, stretch, posture work

76. Next Week
• Time Management
• Priorities and Productivity
• The Education Paradox
• The power of checklists
• Gamifying Learning

77. What are we going to DO?
• Create a Learning Lifestyle
• Time Management
• Focus (Pomodoro)
• Retrieval Practice
• Spaced Practice
• Amplification (Intensify you Learning)

78. What are we going to STOP doing?
• Procrastination
• Distraction
• Multitasking

79. Why am I Here?
• I take your learning seriously
• Fostering someone else’s learning is
a very difficult task
• I can’t teach my students everything,
so I need to teach them how to learn
everything

80. Why am I Here?
• I take my learning seriously
• MEsearch
• I can’t do my job as a TEACHER until
you become a LEARNER
• I change you. You change the world!

81. What about Physical Skills?
• Muscle memory isn’t in your MUSCLES, it is in your BRAIN
• Turn actions into reflexes
• Mix it up!