It is absolutely fantastic, IMO. Going through every week/lecture of it, I keep saying myself it must be an obligatory course for every freshman. We are surrounded with so many distractions in our ordinary daily life and most of us are terrible at habit formation. Procrastination and irregular sleep pattern are our most-common "habit". Long story short, IMHO, this course is a must for whom wants to form a habit, learn how to avoid procrastination / about the importance of sleep / how to avoid distractions and other relevant things.
We'd drastically raise the level of numeracy and critical thinking and even graduation rates for various types of students.
I recently did some image editing with GIMP. (I usually use Photoshop, and don't really like GIMP, but decided to use it because it is FLOSS and I'm switching to FLOSS where available.)
It was one of my first times using it, and it was difficult to use. I had to check a couple tutorials on YouTube before I could get into the flow.
Once I got into the flow, it was an amazing feeling. And after I was done editing, I was able to learn other, new things unrelated to GIMP.
This is the most difficult thing for me: getting into the flow. I suspect that GIMP won't be able to get me into the flow once I become better at it.
It's such a mystery: flow. There are reams and reams written about it on the internet. On how to hack it. Do this, do that.
What I want is a simple activity, that once I start doing it, I automatically get into flow (so that I can harness the momentum to learn other things). Anyone have personal experience with such "hack flow" activities?
They are related but opposed concepts. I see flow as performing whereas learning is growing.
For me, learning feels like the opposite of flow - you are stuck and the mental difficulty is so bad its like physical pain, but with perseverance you break through and get past the obstacle and previously blocked you. Flow is like using a gear on a terrain for which it is suited but when you meet a new terrain and you have no suitable gear, its time to learn you a new one.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful-Learnin...
[2] http://dmacjam.github.io/books/2016/10/01/make-it-stick/
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Numbers-Science-Flunked-Algebra-...
One thing they imparted was that frequent testing is better for learning than repeated reviewing. This caused me to put more emphasis on testing tools and spend less time on reviewing.
For example with vocabulary in language learning rather than review my textbook, I use an SRS like Memrise to test me, incrementally every day.
It also helped me realize how much structure, or behind the scenes help we loose when we leave an environment like university. I would say at the very least it will help you shore up some gaps in your personal learning style.
Can't praise enough.