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Video 4 - 1 Week 4 Introduction

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[MUSIC]

0:12

This week, I'm going to take you down to my basement, so I can show you what happens
behind the scenes with some of the best of online learning.

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We'll also see how a chance lunch with Warren Buffett and be your own inspiration to
become the smartest person in the world by using one simple trick.

0:33

Disruption lies ahead in mini-industries. Disruption that means opportunity for those who
know how to effectively navigate their way into a life of learning. All this and more in this final
week of mindshift. [MUSIC]
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Video 4 - 2 Why Should You Keep Learning?

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[MUSIC] There are very good reasons to always keep learning throughout your life. We
know that there's some 1,400 new neurons that are born everyday in your hippocampus.
You can see your brain's hippocampus in red right here. While this image here is
actually of a growing neuron. You can see the expansion and the new linkages as it's
growing. There's only a modest decline in your neural birth rate as you age. But unless
your brain continues to encounter new experiences, which often means learning
something new, your new neurons will die off before they mature and hook into that
larger neural network. They're kind of like vines that languish and die because there's no
trellis. In adults, new neurons allow us to distinguish between similar experiences and
store them as distinct memories. This means that for new learning, as well as for mental
health, it's important to help new neurons be born, survive, and thrive.

1:15

Of course, we know that physical exercise is one of the most powerful medications we
know of that helps produce new neurons. It's as if exercise scatters these sorts of seeds
that become neural sprouts. Learning is like mortar and fertilizer that encourages the
growth of those new neural sprouts. The younger you are, the more likely it is that
anything you experience is new. As you age it gets easier to fall into a rut. Even when
you tell yourself you are learning something new, it's often just a slight riff on something
you already know. Learning that makes an impact on the brain often means going just a
bit beyond your comfort zone. A useful way to allow new neurons to survive, thrive, and
make those new connections is to do something truly new and different every day. This
automatically presents your brain with novel experiences. These novel experiences can
be as simple as using your left hand to brush your teeth if you're right handed, or just
sitting in a different chair at the dinner table. This is also why travel can be so incredibly
invigorating. It helps keep the brain tuned up, especially if you do your best to immerse
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yourself in the new culture and surroundings. Learning a foreign language when you're
older may be especially worthwhile, because the areas of the brain that are positively
affected by language learning include many of the areas that are negatively affected by
aging.

2:55

In brain terms if you don't use it, you can lose it, no matter how innate and natural your
gifts may seem. Widely admired orator Robert Sobukwe whose spoke so eloquently for
the cause of liberation of black South Africans from the rule of apartheid was subjected
to six years of solitary confinement in the same prison that housed Nelson Mandela on
remote Robben Island. He could communicate with other prisoners only through furtive
hand signals. During this terrible time Sobukwe could feel his powers of speech slipping
away. Those who've spent extended periods at isolated locations with few opportunities
to speak with others often find themselves stumbling through simple conversations
upon their return to civilization. My husband Phil experienced this when he spent a year
at remote Siple Station in Antarctica. Hobbies can also help keep us mentally tuned up,
especially when those activities are combined with physical exercise. If you knit, sew,
quilt, do plumbing or carpentry, play games, use your computer or read, for example,
research shows you're more likely to have stronger cognitive ability as you age. These
findings make sense. For example, measuring and cutting for either quilting or carpentry
clearly help maintain your spatial abilities. There's also evidence that the more you keep
up a learning lifestyle, especially as you grow older, the lower your long-term risk of
devastating illnesses like Alzheimer's disease.

4:37
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Video 4 - 3 MOOC Tips Part 1 – How to Get the Most

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As you might guess, online materials, and MOOCs in particular, are a fantastic way for adults
to keep up with a learning lifestyle, whether they're learning for work or for pleasure. This is
probably why MOOCs are so very popular. There are thousands and thousands of them out
there. So how do you find the ones that are right for you, and how do you take best
advantage of them? Here are some quick tips based on super-MOOCer Ronny De Winter's
insights. Ronny's a freelance software engineer from Belgium who has completed dozens of
MOOCs. First, define what you'd like to learn, either in the short term or more generally in the
next two to three years. Next, find the MOOCs or other online learning options that best fit
your needs. [Link] can be very useful here. This is a website that has thousands
of reviews to help you see what others think about courses. They also have useful rankings,
like top 50 MOOCs of all time and features that allow you to search by subject. Before
enrolling in any MOOC, carefully investigate the course outline, prerequisites, syllabus, and
suggested weekly workload to make sure you can manage it. Schedule enough time each
week to work on your learning. To play it safe, it's a good idea to arrange to have twice the
recommended time available, just in case. Some people like to listen to videos at anywhere
between 1.2 to two times normal speed. More advanced MOOCers can sometimes employ
something called Fast-MOOCing. In this approach, you skim through the syllabus and slides
before watching the videos. Then you watch the videos at up to double speed. Once you get
comfortable doing this, it allows you to cover all the material more efficiently, which can be
useful if time is in short supply. Whether you speed things up, though, can depend on the
type of material. Some MOOCs on algorithms, math, or physics, for example, might be best
done at regular speed. See how things go during the first week. If you you're not getting a lot
out of the MOOC, stop taking it. There's no shame in stopping if you realize it's not right for
you. Don't enroll in too many courses at the same time. You'll get more out of your learning
experience if you study a few subjects deeply rather than many of them superficially. Most
MOOCs are frequently repeated, so you can usually take a course some time later if it doesn't
fit into your schedule. Use the discussion forum to enhance your learning and to get
questions answered; but be aware, this can be time-consuming. You also do want to
remember, however, that the more time you devote to active elements of a MOOC, like the
discussion forums and projects, the more the material will stick with you. Any time you enroll
in a brand new course, you may find it just a bit buggy. So if this bothers you, wait until a
later offering. But first time courses can still be fun, so don't discount them altogether. And
there you go, advice from the best with practical insights about getting the most from
MOOCs. Happy MOOCing.
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Video 4 - 4 Dirty Little Secrets of Traditional vs

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So here I am. This is me, getting ready to go to work at my day job in Michigan. And
here's Terry, taking a few minutes off from his day job in La Jolla, California. That's one
of the great joys of MOOC making. Co-instructors can work together from afar. I'm just a
typical Midwestern engineer, so it was kind of a shocker for me when I was invited to
speak at Harvard about our MOOC, Learning How to Learn. I was even more surprised to
arrive in Cambridge and see the room packed with Harvard and MIT folks, all eager to
learn more about the secret sauce behind the making of our MOOC. Eventually I
understood, at least partly, the reason for their curiosity; Learning How to Learn was a
labor of love made for less than $5,000. Yet it had on the order of the same number of
students as all of Harvard's dozens of MOOCs put together, made for millions of dollars
with hundreds of people. This tells you something really important. Making good online
learning materials is something anybody can do; but not everybody does it. Here are
some dirty little secrets of traditional face-to-face university teaching. There's virtually
no competition. Maybe Professor Smith is better than Professor Jones at your local
university; but Smith's class is full, so you're stuck with Jones. At many universities,
especially the world's elite, the attention goes towards doing great research, not towards
doing great teaching. This is why university teaching sometimes just isn't very good. It's
a statistical truism, by the way, to say that half of all teachers are below average as
teachers. Also, professors become professors because they're good at showing off how
much they know. This is often the opposite of what you really need to be a good teacher,
where the ability to explain in simple, straightforward ways is vital. Lastly, university
teaching is about filling a time slot - say 40 hours in a semester. There is no motivation
to be more efficient, to find clever ways to memorably communicate the materials in 25
hours say, instead of 40. But online is a different world. It combines academia with
Silicon Valley with a little bit of Hollywood - and there's nothing wrong with that. And
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unlike regular classrooms, the online world is highly competitive. The bottom line is if
you had a choice between a class that taught the material and a class that taught the
same material, but where the professor was also funny and brought you onboard with
whimsical visual metaphors that helped you quickly grasp key ideas, which class would
you choose? Universities can add real value to what you're learning by lending insight
from research. Did you know, for example, that research has shown no teacher
education courses have been found to have any effect on the quality of teaching?
Professors can be nervous about the competition, so some can tend to disparage
MOOCs and online learning. They'll say things like MOOCs are bad because they have a
low completion rate. However, I would venture to guess that the real completion rate for
textbooks; that is, that people have read every chapter and done all the problems, is far
lower than the completion rate of MOOCs. Yet professors never say we should get rid of
textbooks because of low completion rates. But back to the matter at hand. My point is
that though universities can provide invaluable insight into whatever you're trying to
learn, they're just not used to competition in teaching. So this is part of why there is
such a range of quality in online materials, even from ostensibly top universities. In the
next video, I'll give you some insight into how Learning How to Learn was made. This
will help set the stage so you can better understand factors to look for in good online
learning.
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Video 4 - 5 Visit to Barb's Basement: The Secret

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[MUSIC] And here we are in my basement. This is were we video tape most of learning
how to learn and while we're video taping most of Mindshift. Okay, so maybe the
basement's a little cleaner than usual. You can see the fireplace mantle is on one side,
the door is on the other. As I mentioned earlier, originally I learned everything I needed
to know about how to set up a studio and how to edit film by searching things out online.
I did most of the video editing for learning how to learn myself with some help from my
husband Phil who is also the man behind the camera. It's not like I picked up editing in a
second. It took me several months of messing around every spare second I could before
I started feeling comfortable with the video editing program. This experience with editing
taught me the great value that video editors can bring to the table in MOOC making. You
can see, for example, the improvement in the videos in Mindshift versus those of
learning how to learn because I'm now working with McMaster's great video editing
team. Obviously not all MOOCs are made this way. But looking behind the scenes at our
basement, and the scripting and editing process, actually gives you a sense of what's
going on behind the scenes in a fair bit of online learning so you can make better
decisions about what works for what works for you. You can see the green screen here.
It's just a cheap cloth on a frame that we bought online. You can see the rest of the
basement around me. There's the teleprompter hood, the edges of the lights here and
there's the fireplace and the edges of the room.

2:00

How do green screen's work? Well, I just stand in front of it like this. Then we crop using
a video editing program to get rid of the stuff on the edges. Then we stick whatever
background we want behind me, just like the weather person at your local TV station. I
can be in the jungle or in the city. We can even just stick in an animation from
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PowerPoint. This is all a pretty straightforward process, although trust me, just like
anyone when I first tried to do it, I had my share of frustrations. Notice the infinite effect
that we simulated by just draping the cloth gently forward. You might be surprised to
learn that even top notch MOOC making facilities that have toured around the world
often don't have a full length green screen. Why might a full length green screen be
important? Because from an evolutionary perspective, things that suddenly loom closer
to you will more likely to kill you. So motion that appears to jump closer as when you go
from full body to half body on video, activates all sorts of neuro attention layers. Motion
of all types, especially unexpected motion really attracts attention. The teleprompter is
an interesting story. MOOC makers sometimes advise instructors not to use a
teleprompter. This is because some instructors read like this, and their scripts are super
pedantic. But the truth is, a good script allows you to carefully plan a MOOC so there
isn't a wasted second, and if you review and edit the writing, you can get rid of most of
that yucky academic sound. Writing a script gives a great chance to think about the
metaphors and seemingly silly stuff that can help quickly convey key ideas. Here, in fact,
is the script for Mindshift. Notice my instructions about what I'm supposed to do, or
where the images are supposed to go. I can put the script into Word's outlining view.
You can see the titles there for each video. Using the outline view allows me to easily
rearrange videos as I'm writing the scripts and trying to devise the best ways to convey
ideas. There are great books about conventional subjects, introductory statistics or
psychology for example but MOOC making is a whole new world. It provides a new
canvas for creative ways of teaching and learning. For example, a conventional MOOC
on learning on how to learn might have had a week on the history of education, another
week on theories of learning, maybe another week on how babies learn. Finally, there
might be some information at the end on best practices for learning. There might have
been one short video on neuroscience. Nothing too much because after all,
neuroscience is complex. But in our learning how to learn, we flipped all that on its head
starting from a foundation of neural science and using metaphor and humor to spiral the
learner quickly through the key ideas. Great MOOCs can synthesize the material in a
whole new way. In a way that hasn't previously been done through conventional class
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work, and that you can't get very easily through books. In our next video, let's take a
look what to look for in well made MOOCs. [MUSIC]
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Video 4 - 6 MOOC Tips Part 2 – Looking More Deeply

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[MUSIC] The easiest way to decide whether an online learning experience is right for you
is to check out an online ranking site. As I've mentioned before, I personally like to use
[Link]. It has a smart way of comparing MOOCs across different platforms by
letting you see people's reviews. Fun game-like aspects, and easy to follow course
structure, and thoughtfully designed quizzes, tests, and projects are obviously important
in any online course. But here are some other valuable MOOC making elements that can
make a difference in how well you learn and how much you enjoy the learning process.

0:51

Research has shown that if you watch a professor on a video for about 30 seconds, you
can get a very good sense of how effective that professor actually is. Amazingly, even as
little as six seconds can allow you to form an effective snap judgement, in part based on
emotional micro expressions that are too fast to truly register. Look for approachable,
encouraging, fun professors who can simplify the material and make the hard stuff look
easy. It may seem obvious that all professors should be this way, but they aren't. It turns
out that when we understand something through a metaphor, we're putting into action
the same neural circuitry that we use to understand the in-depth concept itself.
Traditional teachers sometimes believe that teaching through metaphor dumbs things
down. Smart teachers, however, realize that metaphor and analogy can help students get
an initial grasp of the materials much more quickly. Good online courses often use lots
of vivid metaphors and analogies. Incidentally, if you yourself can come up with a
metaphor, the sillier the better, it can often help you understand even difficult concepts
like those in advanced calculus. Did you know that equations themselves are actually
just metaphors? That's according to Emanuel Derman, one of the world's greatest
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mathematical modelers. Whenever a metaphor breaks down, throw it away and then just
get a new one.

2:31

Online materials with humor can help activate addictive dopamine circuits of pleasure. It
also provides the mental equivalent of a sort of ledge to temporarily rest on and regain
your breath when you're climbing an intellectual mountain.

2:47

In my experience, humor's much more important in online courses than in face to face
classes. If you have a competitive choice between a class that presents the material and
a class that is funny while it presents the material, which one are you going to take?
Look for well done visuals that relate directly to the material. A little clip art is
understandable, but it shouldn't all just be clip art. If the instructor can't take the time to
help develop illustrations, it tells you a lot about how invested that instructor and their
institution are in the course. On the other hand, just slapping a complex textbook image
on the screen also just doesn't cut it. People learn differently from videos than they do
from books. Complex images need to appear part by part. You'll learn better in the same
amount of time if you're not hit visually with everything all at once. If intelligently done
and not just done for style's sake, good editing keeps your attentional circuits in gear
while adding to your comprehension. The best MOOCs showcase the talent of video
editors and instructional designers. There will undoubtedly be many other approaches to
MOOC making that you find very helpful. Please head on over to the discussion forums
and let us know what you think some of these best approaches are. Please tell us some
of your favorite MOOCs and why you like them. [MUSIC]
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Video 4 - 7 Mentors in Your Life

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[MUSIC]

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There is one important aspect of learning, that we haven't yet touched on. Yet it can be
one of the most important aspects of learning of all. That is mentors. Mentors aren't
necessarily parent-like figures who spend many hours brainstorming and guiding you to
your future. In fact, a mentor can be as simple as someone who says, or does,
something that caused you to think and make valuable changes. Or, who gives you
insight about your life. You don't even have to meet a mentor in person. It's not that
mentors can, or even should, tell you what you should be doing. It's that mentors can
help you view the world in a different way, so you can more easily discover and go in the
direction you determine is best for you, not to mention that they can have ideas and
context that can change your life.

1:10

Our lives are filled with a wide variety of mentors who help us in many ways large and
small. Even rude and mean people can be mentors to us since they can show us what we
don't want to be like ourselves. And sometimes their feedback and thoughts although
painful can be helpful in the grand scheme of things. Arnim Rodeck, for example, was an
electrical engineer who made any enormous career change when he decided to become
a creative wood worker, a craft that he would eventually become world class. Arnim
differentiates his mentors into two different types.

1:52
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>> Hi there, there are several type of mentors, the ones who actually pump us up and
energize us, or the ones who actually could be much more critical and actually won't
tolerate any excuses. They might be much more stern and demanding people but at the
end of the day, the insight we get from them is invaluable. >> Mentors can even be online
nowadays. For example, in learning experiences as different as acquiring a new
language or training a horse, you may interact with a mentor who lives far away from
you. My co-instructor, Terry Sejnowski, also has some thoughts here.

2:28

>> The brain works best with concrete examples not abstract aspirations. A good place
to start reinventing yourself is to ask, who has had the most influence on my life and
who has inspired me to start a new life?

2:42

Influential mentors have motivated me to become who I am today.

2:47

In high school, I joined the radio club and I learned electronics and Morse code. The
radio club had tracked the Sputnik, the first satellite to circle the earth at a time when the
US was taken by surprise. I was asked, what is your mission? We all have a mission in
life but if you don't ask yourself the question, you may never find the answer. I still ask
myself this question because the answer keeps changing.

3:14

Asking yourself the right question about your life is half the battle, where do I want to be
next month or next year? This will shape what skills you'll need and what steps you
should take to acquire them.

3:27
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Persistence is a virtue. Don't let set backs keep you back.

3:32

Motivation can also come from working closely with someone who shares the same
goals. Projects with short-term goals can focus the mind wonderfully. The persistence
needed to achieve long term goals can be sustained by collaborations that are more like
marriages.

3:50

These relationships can be the most satisfying, choose them wisely.

3:54

Mind shifting may mean re-evaluating your relationships, finding new short-term
collaborations, and cultivating longer-term ones that take you in new directions.

4:05

>> A word of advice, it's unwise to approach a person you don't know and then ask them
to be your mentor. This can put that person in an uncomfortable situation, after all they
have no idea what your expectations of a mentor are. And truthfully, they have no idea
whether you might be a fit for them. In fact, it's often better to avoid asking someone to
be your mentor, even if you consider them to be a mentor to you. If the fit is right, a
relationship will develop organically, and in the course of this relationship, you may only
get tiny snippets of occasional insight from your mentor. But this can still be very
valuable. Because while these snippets may take only a few seconds for the mentor to
say, they can nevertheless have a profound influence on you and your career. So don't
discount the importance of even the most trivial seeming exchanges with someone you
consider a mentor. Finally, if it's seems reasonable look for ways to make yourself
somehow useful to your mentor. Just as they are for you. Ensuring that the benefits of
the relationship go both ways will make it that much stronger. And if you've had a
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positive mentoring experience, look for ways to pay it forward by mentoring others in
ways similar to the mentoring that has helped you. [MUSIC]
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Video 4 - 8 Read Read Read

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[MUSIC]

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>> My friend, Jake Taylor is a professional investor who also runs a website called Five
Good Questions and online series dedicated to interviewing interesting authors and
creating more inspired widows. Back when he was in business school, Jake won a long
shot of lottery to have lunch with Warren Buffett. Those six hours together with Warren
Buffett transformed Jake's life. >> After meeting Mister Buffett, I couldn't stop wondering
how one man had accumulated so much knowledge in one lifetime. I started reading
everything I could get my hands on about him. And after about a decade now, I think I've
finally unlocked what his magic is.

0:53

The truth is, is that although he and his business partner, Charlie Munger have
incredibly high IQs, their real competitive advantage comes from all the books that they
read. These guys are nonstop readers. If you want to be the smartest person in the room,
it's pretty simple. Just read more than everyone else. Now [COUGH] and you may say, it
is difficult to find time to read. But if cut out 20 minutes a day, that will lead to 35 books
read in 1 year.

1:22

So imagine yourself a year from now, when we've read 35 book, how much smarter you'll
be? Now, think about yourself 3 years out and the 100 books that you'll have read over
that time.

1:33
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All of this compounds out into a richer and more successful life with better
decision-making all along the way. So if I could say, there was one hack, I would say, i t's
to read more than everyone else. >> One control study of well over 3,000 participants
found that book readers have a survival advantage over those who read only
newspapers or magazines, or who didn't read much at all. Basically, book readers
showed about a 20% reduction in risk of mortality over the 12 years of followup
compared to non-book readers. There's something about book reading that is specially
healthy. We talked about the importance of metaphor in learning. Here's something to
think about if you're trying to be creative, as well as knowledgeable about a field. Let's
say that you're trying to understand the best approaches to investing. So you read all the
most famous books on investing and many other books on investing, as well. What you
don't tend to think about is that everybody else who's interested in investing is doing
pretty much the same thing. So, the same input can mean much the same output.
Meaning that you won't really have much of an advantage on everyone else. However, if
you make a habit of reading not only within your discipline or subject area, but also
devoted a little time to reading and learning something completely unrelated at least it
seems that way. You have a much better chance of bringing creative new approaches
and ideas to the discipline through the metaphors that will naturally develop in your
mind. This could be what else I have given you that extra edge. In this MOOC, we've
placed a lot of emphasis on online learning, but don't forget the value of reading good
books in helping you to keep up with life long learning. Do you have a favorite book or
author who's impacted your learning, the quality of your life or your understanding of life
and your place in it? Head on over to the discussion forum and let us know what you
think, and learn as well from the top insights of professors. [MUSIC]
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Video 4 - 9 Surviving in the New Information Economy

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It never occurred to me that I would someday become omniscient, which I have for all
practical purposes. Information flows through the Internet at the speed of light. We are
living through an explosion of information in its many forms. The economy is going
digital, and programming skills are in great demand at many companies. As the world
shifts from an industrial economy to an information economy, education and job training
will have to adapt. We are witnessing the beginning of a major shift in how we live. The
Age of Information will have as profound an impact on society by enhancing our
cognitive abilities, as the Industrial Revolution had 250 years ago by enhancing physical
power. The timetable for this transformation will be much more rapid than the Industrial
Revolution, which took 100 years for the world to adapt to machines. The Information
Age will play out over the next few decades. We heard last week that the South Korean
Go champion was beaten by AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence program based on deep
learning that was bio-inspired. Learning in deep neural network models has become
possible because of the million times increase in computer power since the 1980s. Deep
learning has made it possible to reach human levels of performance in speech
recognition and object recognition in images. As we reverse engineer the brain's
learning systems, we are also gaining new insights into human intelligence. Nature
evolved learning as a way for a broad range of problems to be solved by experience with
the world, and humans learn faster and more deeply than any other species. Google
recently released a new version of Google Translate based on deep learning, which was
a quantum leap in the quality of translation between natural languages. Literally
overnight, language translation went from a fragmented, hit-or-miss jumble of phrases to
seamless sentences. Previous methods searched for combinations of words that could
be translated together, but deep learning looks for dependencies across whole
sentences. When you use an Android cell phone to transcribe speech, you are using
deep learning. When speech recognition is combined with language translation, it will
become possible to communicate across cultures. Star Trek's universal translator is
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within our reach. An even larger disruption is beginning to affect service industries and
professions, as machine learning matures and is applied to many other problems where
big data are available. Medical diagnosis based on the records of millions of patients will
become more accurate. A recent study applied deep learning to a medical database of
dermatological images for over 2000 different skin diseases. The network was trained to
diagnose these diseases. Performance was comparable to that of expert dermatologists.
It should now be possible for anyone with a smartphone to take a photo of a suspicious
skin lesion and have it diagnosed instantly in the cloud, a process that now requires a
visit to a doctor's office, a long wait for the lesion to be screened by an expert, followed
by a substantial bill. This will greatly expand the scope and quality of dermatological
care. Deep learning is just beginning to affect the legal profession. Much of the routine
work in law offices that charge hundreds of dollars an hour will become automated.
Complying with the increasing regulatory complexity will also benefit from automated
systems. Legal support will be available for the average person who cannot now afford a
lawyer. Not only will legal work be cheaper, it will be much faster, a factor that is often
more important than the expense. Deep learning will have an even bigger impact on your
everyday life. As you interact with the Internet, you are generating data about yourself
that is machine-readable. This can be used to create a personal assistant that knows you
better than anyone else in the world, and will not forget anything. Your children will have
their own personal tutors who'll accompany them throughout their education. The
educational opportunities for the children of today's children will be better than the best
education available today to wealthy families. As these new technologies mature, the
new jobs that will be opening up will require new skills. The steam engine displaced
human labor, but created jobs for engineers who could build and service steam engines.
As jobs that now require cognitive skills are taken over by automated AI systems, there
will be new jobs for those that can create and maintain these systems. These new jobs
will require new skills. So, be prepared for a lifetime of learning.
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Video 4 - 10 Week 4 Wrap Up

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As we learned in this final week, new neurons are being born every day in the
hippocampus, the critical area of your brain for learning and memory. But new learning
is needed to provide a trellis that allows these new neurons to survive, thrive, and grow.
Learning can help keep you physically as well as mentally healthy both in your youth
and your maturity. Without new learning, especially in ways that can take you outside
your comfort zone, you can become inflexible and set in your ways. That's never a good
idea. Of course, one of the best ways to keep learning is to use MOOCs. We even walked
behind the scenes in MOOC making so you could be a better judge of how good online
learning is created. Metaphors, humor, and great video editing go a long way to create
optimal learning experiences, whether you're studying subjects as different as calculus
or bonsai. And mentors, whether the type that pumps you up or the type that tolerates
no excuses, can take your learning to an even higher level. Persistence is a virtue. Don't
let setbacks keep you back. Sporadically check your internal compass by asking
yourself what is your mission. We learned how important it is to use a good online class
search engine like Class Central that allows you to compare ratings. We also learned
about techniques like fast-MOOCing and balancing how many MOOCs you take.
Well-done online learning can actually be better than in-class learning. The online
combination of academia with Silicon Valley and a little bit of Hollywood can keep you
interested and engaged in ways that regular face-to-face courses have trouble with. With
online, you have more choice to find the best teachers and approaches. Of course, there
are other great ways to keep up with the learning lifestyle. One of the best ways is to
read a book. 20 minutes a day of reading can help you to be the smartest person in the
room. Surviving in the new information economy isn't necessarily easy. Much disruption
lies ahead in virtually every industry, but with disruption comes plenty of opportunity.
This week, we've given you some powerful tools to help take advantage of those
opportunities.
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Video 4 - 11 Finale: Discovering Your Hidden

0:00

[MUSIC] I was inspired to create this movie because I've had a second chance at life.
Long after I was supposed to be set in my career and set in my ways, I was lucky enough
to have the opportunity to transform myself from a person whose only apparent talent
was in language and the humanities. I began a new career trajectory that eventually led
to my becoming a professor of engineering.

0:40

>> This book's subtitle is Break Through the Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your
Hidden Potential. This covers enormous scope, but especially when we delved into the
science, a common thread became clear. People could often do more, change more, and
learn more often, often far more than they ever dreamed possible. Our potential is
hidden in plain sight, all around us.

1:07

>> There are two overlapping aspects of learning and we've explored both in this MOOC.
The first is to realize that mindshift, deep changes in life that occur through learning, is
something that can be done at any age with any goal in mind. Well-made MOOCs and
other dynamic learning experiences show us how powerful, fun, and even addictive
learning can be. And importantly, life long learning also keeps our minds fresh as we
age.

1:41

The second aspect of mind shift relates to career. Career selection, career enhancement,
and career switching. We've explored each of these areas and discovered a common
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theme. That background and training from the past that might at first seem entirely
useless often proves valuable in your new job or field. These days, working behind the
scenes in the MOOC making world, I'm newly inspired by all the changes that learners
are making. Over and over, I see that people have the desire and ability to learn and
change at every age and stage. Not only from the humanities to engineering as I did, but
in virtually any direction. That's why we've also stressed that a really meaningful
mindshift often isn't just about following your passions, but about broadening your
passions. Reenvisioning yourself and the directions you can take, both in your private
life and in your career, and then taking the steps as a learner to make this revisioning a
reality. Since you've taken this MOOC, you undoubtedly have a thirst for knowledge. So
I'm hoping that what you've learned here has widened the scope of what you thought
you could do, and will help you broaden your passion for discovery. Learning can be an
overwhelming pursuit. But it also provides a way for us to meet some of our deepest
needs to live as full, vibrant human beings.

3:18

It's been wonderful working with you as you've explored how to make your own
mindshift. And I wish you all the best as you put this into action. But, of course, many
people rebel against learning or resign themselves to staying where they are in life. What
about people like these, you might ask? How can they make a mindshift of the sort we've
been talking about? If we can leave you with one last message in this MOOC, it is this.
Sometimes it takes just that one special person, a mentor, to unlock or reframe and
reveal the unseen potential.

3:59

>> And so, we hope this MOOC also inspires you to turn to others. To seek out mentors
and also to be a mentor yourself for those who may have lost the passion for discovery.
>> May your own discoveries open the minds of those you touch, so they too, can
discover the joy and beauty of learning. [MUSIC]