How to actually learn from online courses

Published on: September 5, 2024 by Joona Tuunanen

Recently I made a jump on my learning journey, kinda accidentally.

I don’t even know how many online courses I’ve taken during the last 10 years, wouldn’t be surprised if it amounted to 50+. Some short, some longer, some cheap, some 1000 euros+. Mostly those shorter and cheaper ones with a specific goal.

Thing is… I’ve wasted quite a lot of them.

How? Mainly because I haven’t retained most of the information.

But I think I’ve (accidentally) learned how to take online courses, actually learn from them and to retain the information better.

How I learn from courses at the moment

I’ve figured out that the right process for me is:

1. Watch the course front to back just to grasp the content and get the gist of it.
2. Ponder about the content for a bit (might be hours, days or even weeks).
3. Try to implement what I’ve learned solely relying on my memory.
4. If at this point I could implement the things, I can be happy as the message has gone through and has helped me in practice. Usually that’s not the case though, especially with details.
5. Retake the course, but this time I’m taking copious notes. Example screenshot later in this post.
6. Refer back to my notes when I try to implement the things I’ve learned.
7. Profit.

Now, that process isn’t anything groundbreaking or unique, but I’ve noticed this has made a huge difference in outcomes and my ability to actually take advantage of the experience and knowledge of the instructor(s).

That’s mostly due to a few things.

First, during the first run I can focus only on the content without too much pressure as I know I’ll be coming back to the material later.

Second, I will force myself to try to implement the things soon after taking the course. This leads to me buying (only) courses that I feel are important / useful right now, instead of learning just in case. It’s also a good test of how much and what exactly I’ve retained from the course. I can’t highlight the importance of this second point enough.

Third, when I retake the course and take notes and screenshots, I’ll try to make sure to be as comprehensive as possible because I’d prefer not to get back to the material for a third time as that seems like a waste of time. Especially if the course is more on the long side.

Here’s a short example of notes I’ve taken:

That’s way less than 5% of the notes I took from a 2 hour music production masterclass, but should give an idea of the detail level.

Especially with music production or other creative things I’m taking a lot of screenshots as I retain things better if I can also see things and don’t have to rely only on text.

That’s one of the things I’ve changed compared to my notes on Lag’s rhythm masterclass and it has really made a difference.

Conclusion

Try to take (better) notes, it’s worth it. I use the default Mac Notes app because it’s simple and as it syncs the notes to my phone, it’s easy to refer back to them wherever I am.

I’m currently in the process of retaking some of the courses I’ve gone through previously to squeeze more value out of that content.

And the weird thing is I don’t even mind it.