Some thoughts on creating a course

Greetings. I’ve had the idea of making my own course with which to teach mnemonics to my friends and other people, in general, for several months.
Given that we have a fair number of courses, there are doubts about the idea and thoughts of doing it differently.
The idea of my course is self-sufficient. In mnemonics I have not found almost anything new for a long time, read many books, also participated in 2 courses for interest and comparison of approaches.
(I am in the CIS segment and discuss the development of courses in this vein, although abroad the situation is similar)
I can say that one of them is not particularly interested in working with the student, the emphasis is on self-study with difficult assignments. Later the author slipped into mysticism and obscurantism.
The second is sharpened on communication with the teacher and doing assignments, very noticeable influence of the first author. This course explains and works better with practice, less risk of abandonment for the beginner. But there are still minor flaws. (All of the material from the 1 course + personal improvements).
There are also specialized courses for sports and memorization of languages, from other authors, but I do not consider them. The rest of the usual way to make money on the ignorant, primitivism and greed.
And here comes my idea to make a course that + - will not be like the first two. Also to consider mnemonics more from a scientific point of view, removing the bits of mysticism that detract from the object of study. Overall, provide a strategy for development and learning, without all the tinsel (it’s the simplest), give tools for serious education + mnemonic skill.

Since, it is good to learn for yourself and learn many sciences and understand them without the ability to specifically memorize. People write notes, work through the information. Constantly work with it. They get good results. And on the one hand, yes.

But this doesn’t make mnemonics some kind of obscurantism, or a crawling thing, or "the easy way out. In fact, it doesn’t.

It is a very useful knowledge that you need to know how to implement correctly, and then you will get the same results as in the paragraph above, but even better. Reliable memorization, for a long time. You don’t have to constantly read outlines because you have it memorized and controlled in your head. No need to waste time in the void, especially re-reading literature because you haven’t done it for a month.

Take an outline → memorize it. If you need to go back to a topic, even if you know, you open the right part of the book or notes.

The idea of the course is not just to make 1 more course on memorization, or to make money, but to demonstrate the real value of knowledge and memory to someone who hasn’t dealt with it.

So far, I haven’t encountered this anywhere. Only hints that in this area of knowledge you can memorize formulas, theses, and here laws or code of some kind. There is no idea of education. There is the applied subject matter.

Moreover, it is very difficult to make a manual how to memorize mathematics or physics. Time, effort, a person has to understand what you have coded.

You have to give the rods.

Do you think such courses make sense? Would you try to take one?

You can try to create such courses yourself, for yourself as an exercise, for your friends, and for society in general. There aren’t many people who will educate. Given that there are and have been walls of misunderstanding around mnemonics for several hundred years, you have to target people who want to learn about the world. There will always be people who consider it nonsense, crutches, and nonsense. Even they may be intellectuals, but coming across yet another garbage course “super memory in 7 days” they make the final conclusion that it’s garbage, with the purpose of making money off the naive.

Mnemonics can’t belong to anyone because they are already everywhere. The way our brains work allows us to do this. Naturalness, not artificiality. A course as a tool for information transmission and learning. When it is written, one acts not as a mnemonicist, but as a teacher in the first place.

I have a bold but humble idea to try to promote the idea of mnemonics to the masses, as much as possible. Without tinsel, without mysticism (which happens to be the case), without flashy and silly designs, but with specificity and usefulness. So that the person no longer needs to take courses of other authors, and this situation is frequent. Self-sufficiency, if you can call it that.

Any course should help a person to master knowledge independently. A coach will not teach you to fight for you. A teacher will teach you to learn. He will give information, light the torch of knowledge, and then you yourself.

But still there is a question of doing it or not. People learn mnemonics from these courses, there is nothing cardinally new in my material. Rework and add their own approaches, tools. Then you can just make a separate thread about education, and mnemonics refer to others :/.

We don’t need self-replicating and self-copying, parasitic and garbage. It is done more at will, but I want to understand the feasibility and effectiveness of the activity. Thanks for reading. I will be glad for advice, suggestions, criticism, ideas and discussion, xd.

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Would you include the memory palace in your course? Do you think it is a tool for long term storage or just like training wheels on a bicycle, once you learn how to balance, you take it off? And is there really such a thing as long term memory? All memories fade eventually. It’s just a matter of time.

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@docraymund, after writing a 12 week course, I had to make some important calls about the difficulty levels of mnemonic structures in order to pace the learning. I had to start with basic skills before diving in to any mnemonic techniques.

The “memory palace” is the very first technique I would teach. Actually, I use body pegs to limit the number of locations to make it easy for the first “palace.” I use different terms other than memory palace. Then I expand out to other peg systems like locations around the house and scenes in a sitcom.

After that I start using items found at a location to store images in and how to see features and expand the body pegs into more detail for better usage. Finally I introduce and teach the story technique.

Hope that gives you some direction on the course design and development for you. I’ve done about 40 courses for IT and business so I enjoy this kind of work.

Doug

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Thank you very much!

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The palace, yes. Because it is one of the basic methods. After all, it is used for training and short-term memorization. For the long term, there’s another approach (highlighting details on an object, where memorization goes to each part).

For remembering practical information, you need to work with sports memorization. Exercises, remembering numbers, practicing all the basic methods. From the general to the particular.

About the term “long term memory”, I think yes, it is one of the basic for survival, a mechanism of the brain. But I’m used to calling it just memory, without scientific terminology. It is there, for you are the proof, all your memories and knowledge.

All people eventually fade away. It’s just a matter of time, huh. In all seriousness, you have to find the cause of forgetting. If you use mnemonics and bring the information to automatism, you shouldn’t have this problem. Only if there are some easy to fix bugs, heh. Our brain knows how to filter perceptions and memories for the day. The most interesting thing is that you can remember childhood events, in detail: ordinary days, routines, trips, hikes, some household activities or important events. Yes, as time goes on, the ties weaken. But you can’t forget everything completely, especially if you’re not suffering from dementia.

It has been noticed that memory works according to the principle: stimulus (thinking about it) → reaction (remembering, reproducing). The fundamental thing on which also builds an understanding of how mnemonics work. The connection of images in the head.

Thanks for the idea, will consider your material in the near future. 40 courses sounds interesting!

If I were to start talking about mnemonics to someone who knows nothing about it, it would be with the basics. The work of memory by stimulus and reaction, what quality the image should be in our mind. What is the concept of an image? In the future, you can also talk about types (there are about 50 of them).

Next would suggest memorizing a few nouns, connecting the images in your head. A person should understand how it happens and try it. A few exercises on basic methods, cicero, numbers 0-9, numbers 00-99. The system can be any, here the task is to teach how to work with large volumes and get used to it.

After that you can go to more “complicated” things. From the general to the particular.

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