Better use of cognitive resources for learning

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.

-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

none, only the motivation counts

Recommended prerequisites*: interest in neuroscience and personal development, desire to explore limiting beliefs about learning

Final exam (50%) and continuous assessment (50%)

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

Hourly volumes*:

            CM : 20

            TD : 13.5

            TP : 9