Optional Interview with Dr. Norman Fortenberry - Learning at MIT

For this interview, it’s a pleasure to introduce you to one of today’s leading figures in learning how to learn more effectively, Dr. Norman Fortenberry, the executive director of the American Society of Engineering Education.

Dr. Fortenberry is MIT cubed.

That is, he has his bachelors, masters, and doctorate in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Because of his interest in learning, Norman took an unusual career path.

After teaching his first engineering classes, he realized that there was the disconnect.

He knew a great deal about his research area, but he didn’t know about how to teach effectively.

The reality is, that most new professors arrive at their universities without any training in how to teach effectively.

Dr. Fortenberry wanted to do something about this problem.

His work at the National Science Foundation and the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science have helped create a whole network of support for faculty in science, engineering, math, and technology who want to help students learn effectively.

In this interview, we’ll get some practical ideas from Dr. Fortenberry on how you can most effectively approach your studies.

Thank you so much for being here, Dr. Fortenberry.

I’m just so impressed.

I have to ask you.

Here you are.

You landed at MIT, which is one of the top educational institutions, at least technologically-speaking, in the world.

And you successfully climbed your way up the ladder all the way through to get your PhD.

Let’s cut past the generalities and get to specifics.

What were some of the most, most worthwhile tricks and approaches that you used to help you study and learn most effectively?

Well, MIT is, is a very good institution and not just technologically.

For example, it has one of the top political science departments in the world.

But, that said, the techniques that, that I pursued, the first and foremost was to recognize that what worked in high school will not work in college.

In high school, you’re taught to, well actually, most of Pre-K, you’re taught you’re to do your own work, study alone, etc.

That is deadly.

In college, at least in engineering schools, the expectation is that you’re part of a group.

The expectation is that there are course notes and course bibles that are all over campus.

There’s an expectation that you have access to resources that if you don’t have access to, you’re in deep trouble.

So you have to make sure that you live up to that expectation by making the connections to the people who have the resources that you need to succeed.

The key lesson in, in collegiate study, at least in engineering school, is you are part of a team.

And if you don’t have a team, you find a team.

If you are a team, you maximize the team.

But you have to be part of the group.

Engineering is a team sport.

You know, all the, all the stereotypes are about the lone engineer, the lone programmer.

But it’s a team sport.

And you have to find your team as quickly as possible and make sure that the members of that team are very serious about their studies as well.

Okay.

Your competition at MIT included some of the top students in the world.

How did your, you approach your studies so that you could find things in a way to keep yourself from being intimidated.

I was intimidated.

I was extremely intimidated.

What it took was reminding myself and having others remind me, my peers, some of the administrators, to remind me that I didn’t suddenly become less smart once I got to MIT.

There were some extremely bright people, but I was one of those bright people.

And that I needed to build a community of support around me.

I gave support.

I received support.

So yes, you are entirely intimidated.

At least I was, and people I knew were.

But we knew that if we worked together as a team, we would make it through.

And so, that was they key was to remember the objective is to learn the material. The objective is to finish the class.

Even in grad school, the objective is to get the degree.

And you keep your eye focused on the prize, and you fight it out, and you get through.

Early on in your college career, you took a more advanced calculus course-

Yes.

That most people don’t usually take, at least at that stage.

I understand this set you back in your studies.

Yes it did.

How could you have avoided this scenario, and how did you keep going in the face of facing failure and, and hardship?

Well the, the way to avoid the problem is to, is to, so this is all about balancing ego.

I should have done what the overwhelming majority of students did, which was take the regular track calculus and not take the Calculus with Applications, which everybody said was the hard track.

But I said, but it has application, so if I’m going to be an engineer that makes sense for me to do.

There are times when there’s wisdom in the wisdom of the crowd.

There are times when being lemming is not the brightest thing in the world to do.

The challenge is figuring out which is which.

But I think I could have informed my decision by not only talking to my peers, but talking to some grad students and some administrators, you know, counseling deans, et cetera, about that choice and my background in calculus, which was not strong because I hadn’t taken calculus before.

I was handed an AP book and that was, that was my calculus class senior year in Louisiana.

so, so the, the thing is to recognize when one is making a reasonable choice and when one is not making a reasonable choice.

Now, how did I persist?

I buckled down and studied very hard, again with the study groups.

And I spent a lot of extra time going over material, two and three different ways to make sure that I understood it.

Okay, so what do you do to help prompt, sort of, what we call diffuse mode or neural resting states, the fresh perspectives you get from those kinds of states.

In your, your research, in your work, how do you, how do you prompt those?

Well I think it’s very important, the point that you make.

One of the stories that I tell people is that, you know, it’s okay to keep your nose to the grindstone.

There are plenty of people, at that point, talking about MIT, plenty of people walking around with no noses.

But if you keep your nose to the grindstone too long, you begin to cut into brain.

And since brain is what you’re trying to use, that’s counterproductive.

So it is important to take a break.

My breaks involve total mental turn-off.

I wa, I read cartoons in the, in the newspaper or watch cartoons on television.

I watch some of the, now, I watch some of the silliest, most inane, television shows, as a form, without naming any names, as a form of relaxation.

That allows me to turn off my conscious brain, your unconscious work.

It’s a lot like taking a nap.

You know, there’s so many things coming at you and pushing on you, that you have to redirect your focus in order for your brain to work on background and come up with the answers.

So, so, I do things.

Some people exercise.

I used to exercise more.

I need to exercise more.

But I do things that shut my brain down in different ways.

Well, we share a little, my guilty pleasure is, I, I love to read the National Enquirer. .

That would work, too.

Many of our viewers have brothers and sisters and friends who are trying to learn new things.

So, reflecting back on your own childhood, and even your work today, how have other people helped you in your learning?

And, did, did people sometimes help you, perhaps, by not helping you?

And, do you have any practical suggestions for our viewers, who are trying to learn how to learn?

There’s very practical guidance on learning how to learn in, in any number of publications and online in, in terms of a, a systematic process for acquiring information.

Some things I used with my son when he was younger, in terms of using as many different modes of input as you can.

See something.

Write it out by hand so that you’ve got the muscle memory, repeating it back to yourself.

See it, say it, spell it, whatever.

As many input modes, you’ve got your auditory learners, your visual learners.

You, you saturate yourself with learning modes.

That’s one of the reasons why people need to be careful when you have a faculty member or a teacher to put something on, on overheads or, or Powerpoints these days.

And you just take their overheads and don’t really study them.

The, the mechanical act of writing helps you to internalize that material, as well as going back over the notes again, helps you to internalize that material.

So, multi-mode input is critical for learning.

again, with the study groups and challenging each other, because what you, what you think you know, you find out when you try to explain it to somebody else, that’s why teaching is one of the best ways to learn.

But even if you don’t go full blown to tutoring somebody else, just in discussing it with a set of peers and colleagues, okay, this is what I think I know.

And they challenge you.

Okay, well that’s not what I thought I thought, but let me explain.

And they will either, you will either validate what you thought, or you will find a, the fallacy in what you thought.

And they do the same thing.

And so you help each other by explaining material to each other.

If you just write it out, yeah I’ve got it.

Well, you may not have it, or you may have it wrong. And so you have to take the time to explain it, teach it, whatever, to somebody else as a way to make sure that you, in fact, have what you think you have in terms of your learning.

I think active learning like this, really grappling with it and using information that’s within your own mind, that’s the best way to know you’ve really got it within your own mind.

Sure.

So, you’re exactly right.

Norman, thank you so much.