Managing Your Own Learning

That's the purpose of this compact and easily digestible "learning handbook." Its authors, a professor of higher education and a former teacher of human resources management, reassure us we can learn anything we need to know, be it new career/tech/computer skills, subjects we hated in grade school, or how to change a light bulb--presumably if we first "learn how to learn." From there, they introduce us to seven key "ways of learning": behavioral (learning new skills), cognitive (learning from presentations), inquiry (learning to think), using mental models (problem solving), collaborative (group learning), virtual reality (improving performance), and holistic (learning from experience.) The final section of the book is an overview of places to find the info and knowledge we're looking for--from the old-fashioned, bricks-and-mortar library to the newfangled browse-and-click Web.

If you're looking for a hands-on text to beef up your learning skills (complete with those use-your-own-experience self-tests and worksheets we all snicker at yet find so fun and invaluable), this isn't it. Although Managing Your Own Learning offers some general examples to illustrate its theories, it does far more bland lecturing than engaging (so much for learning by doing). What's more, the closing section on how to use libraries, the Internet, and other research tools is fairly simple-minded (on libraries, to wit: "The card catalog has been replaced with an online catalog accessed through a computer station...." No foolin'?) But if you're looking for a clear, concise survey of some of the major learning theories of the past few decades, translated out of the academic gobbledygook of their creators and into plain English with quick-summary sidebars and bulleted-list breakdowns, this is a fine book (it sort of reads like an introductory text for aspiring K-12 teachers). --Timothy Murphy