ECTS
4 credits
Component
Faculty of Science
Description
This teaching unit aims to provide students with recent knowledge in cognitive neuroscience in order to better use their brain resources to better learn, reflect, be critical of information and of themselves, and solve a problem more efficiently. The aim is to make some of the brain mechanisms involved in learning more readable in order to offer students the opportunity to take a look at their way of working and to help them choose more effective cognitive strategies from among those proposed. The course also offers students ways to become better scientists by avoiding cognitive biases in favor of a rigorous, innovative and creative scientific approach. Workshops and lectures will be offered in this sense in the class. Portraits of great and inspiring scientists will also illustrate how science advances.
Finally, aware that multiplying the sensory input channels stabilizes the memory trace, we propose a part of the teaching in the form of forum theater for those who wish to do so. This lively formula allows the student who wishes to invest in the game to be proactive in changing his or her profile as a learner and transforming him or her into an actor both on stage and in life. For those who are not inclined to act, there is no obligation. Simply observing the play of others is a powerful awareness of unconscious mechanisms that are not at the service of their learning and allows them to actively integrate the resources that are proposed to them.
Objectives
-Know your brain better to succeed at university, by developing your cognitive and creative abilities and by protecting yourself from cognitive biases
-to better understand how science advances
-study some great scientists as inspiration
Necessary pre-requisites
none, only the motivation counts
Recommended prerequisites*: interest in neuroscience and personal development, desire to explore limiting beliefs about learning
Knowledge control
Final exam (50%) and continuous assessment (50%)
Syllabus
Part 1: Knowledge of your cognitive resources, better use of your brain, better thinking
Learning, automatisms
Attention,
Infobesity,
The multi-task,
Motivation,
Memory processes,
Emotions and desire in learning,
Procrastination,
Part 2 : Scientific approach, How to discover and innovate
The scientific approach, what is science, what it can and cannot do, its limits
To be an inventor, a researcher, a discoverer, a scientist
How to establish a scientific fact: evidence, evidence bundles, clues, cross-checking, deductions, cause or consequence, correlations, intuitions, inspiration,
Experimental design (controls, artifacts, reproduction, traps and illusions, measuring instruments, multi-technique approaches,...)
Thought experiments
Modeling, models, mathematical formalism
Thinking together, group work, brain storming
Knowing how to inform yourself, choosing your sources, making your notes come alive
Learning from direct experience
The important role of errors and failures in science, serendipity
Cognitive biases, knowing them and how to avoid them
Risk taking in science, how to learn from failure, fear,
Critical thinking
Innovation, creativity, how do we find out?
What to do when faced with an obstacle?
Bibliographic research
Scientific integrity
Part 3: Portraits, thinking and advice of great scientists, discoverers and innovators
Additional information
Hourly volumes*:
CM : 20
TD : 13.5
TP : 9