Learning How to Learn on Coursera — The Course to Take Before Your Next Certification

Most of this site is about what to learn next: a cybersecurity certificate, a data analytics path, an AI course. This article is about something that comes before all of that: how to learn it.

Switching careers usually means learning a lot of difficult material quickly, often in the evenings, after a full day of work. Most people go about it the way they did in school: reread the notes, highlight the textbook, cram before the exam. Those habits feel productive, but they're some of the least effective ways to study.

Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects is the Coursera course that fixes this. It's taught by Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski, it's one of the most-enrolled courses in Coursera's history, and it's free to audit.

Why a study-skills course belongs on a career site

Everything else we review assumes you can absorb the material. The Google Cybersecurity Certificate, ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity, and the TryHackMe SOC Level 1 path are all long and dense. Many people who start them don't finish, and it's rarely because the material is too hard. Usually they lose momentum, procrastinate, or study in ways that don't stick, then give up.

Learning How to Learn tackles exactly those problems. It's the one course on Coursera that makes every other course on Coursera more likely to pay off.

Who teaches it

Barbara Oakley is an engineering professor at Oakland University and the author of A Mind for Numbers, the book the course grew out of. Her own story is part of the appeal: she did badly at math in school, served in the US Army, and later retrained as an engineer. In other words, she's a career changer who had to figure out how to learn difficult technical material as an adult.

Terrence Sejnowski is a computational neuroscientist at the Salk Institute and UC San Diego. He provides the neuroscience behind the techniques, so the advice is grounded in how the brain works, not just in study-hack folklore.

The course is published on Coursera through Deep Teaching Solutions. It's beginner-level, self-paced, and doesn't require any background in science or psychology.

How popular is it?

Very. Learning How to Learn has been one of Coursera's most-enrolled courses for years, with millions of learners. The English version shows more than 90,000 reviews on Coursera, and the overwhelming majority are positive. Third-party trackers put its rating at around 4.8 out of 5.

A rating like that over so many learners tells you something: it delivers what it promises, consistently, for a very wide range of people.

What the course covers

The course is built around four big themes. Each one comes with short videos, quizzes, and interviews with people who learned difficult subjects as adults.

1. What learning is: focused and diffuse thinking

The core idea of the course is that your brain has two modes of thinking:

• Focused mode: concentrated, deliberate attention on a problem. This is what you use when you work through a practice question.
• Diffuse mode: a relaxed, wandering state where your brain makes broader connections in the background. This is what happens on a walk, in the shower, or as you fall asleep.

Real learning needs both. When you're stuck on a problem, staring at it harder often doesn't help. Stepping away and letting diffuse mode work often does. This section also explains why sleep matters so much for learning and introduces the Pomodoro technique: 25 minutes of focused work followed by a short break.

2. Chunking: how understanding is built

A "chunk" is a piece of knowledge your brain has compressed into a single usable unit. Experienced analysts recognize an attack pattern in a log file at a glance because they've built chunks for it. Beginners have to work through each line.

This section covers:

• How to build chunks: focus, understand the core idea, then practice until it's automatic
• The illusion of competence: why rereading and highlighting feel like learning but aren't
• Recall practice: closing the book and retrieving what you just read, which is one of the most effective study techniques there is
• Interleaving: mixing different problem types instead of practicing one type at a time
• Einstellung: how a first idea can block you from seeing a better one

The illusion-of-competence lesson alone is worth the time. Many people who fail certification exams studied for hours. They just studied in ways that made them feel ready without making them ready.

3. Procrastination and memory

Procrastination gets a full treatment here, and the advice is practical rather than motivational:

• Why procrastination is a habit triggered by the discomfort of starting, not a character flaw
• Process over product: committing to "work for 25 minutes" instead of "finish chapter 4"
• Building routines so studying doesn't depend on willpower
• Planning tomorrow's tasks the night before

The memory section covers techniques for remembering things that don't come with meaning attached, such as port numbers, acronyms, and command syntax. These include memory palaces, vivid imagery, and spaced repetition: reviewing material at increasing intervals instead of cramming it all at once.

4. Renaissance learning and test-taking

The final section is about learning as a lifelong habit, including the idea that it's never too late to pick up a difficult new field. That matters if you're changing careers in your thirties, forties, or later.

It finishes with practical exam advice, including the "hard start, jump to easy" technique. You look at a hard question first, move to easier ones when you get stuck, and come back once your diffuse mode has had time to work on it.

What you'll be able to do afterwards

By the end, you should be able to:

1. Notice when you're stuck and use diffuse mode instead of grinding
2. Tell the difference between actually understanding material and just recognizing it
3. Use recall practice and spaced repetition instead of rereading
4. Beat procrastination by focusing on the process rather than the outcome
5. Memorize dry, arbitrary facts using imagery and memory palaces
6. Go into an exam with a strategy, not just hope

What's strong

It's practical. Every idea comes with something you can do the same day. Little of it is abstract theory.

It's grounded in research. Sejnowski's neuroscience gives the techniques credibility. You understand why recall practice works, which makes you more likely to keep using it.

It's short and free. You can audit the full course content without paying, and most people finish it in a couple of weeks of evenings.

It's encouraging, especially for career changers. Oakley's story, and the interviews with adult learners, make a strong case that you can learn difficult technical material at any age.

It improves everything else you study. It's the rare course whose value grows with every course you take afterwards.

What's weaker

The production is dated. The course first launched in 2014, and some of the videos look it: simple slides, green-screen presenting, and occasional cartoon animations. The content holds up, but the presentation isn't as polished as newer courses.

It doesn't teach a job skill. Don't expect a resume line that impresses a recruiter. The certificate is a nice extra, but the value is in how you study afterwards.

Some of it will be familiar. If you've already read about the Pomodoro technique or spaced repetition, a few sections will be review. The course is still the clearest explanation of how those pieces fit together.

It covers learning, not productivity in general. If you want help with time management at work, goal setting, or career planning, this isn't that course.

Who should take this course

• Career changers about to start a long certificate program in cybersecurity, data, or AI
• Anyone preparing for a certification exam, especially if you've failed one before or tend to cram
• Adult learners returning to study after years away from school
• Chronic procrastinators who start courses with enthusiasm and stall in week three
• Managers and mentors who want to help their teams learn more effectively

Who can skip it

• People who already study with recall and spaced repetition and don't struggle with procrastination. You'll probably know most of it already.
• People looking for a credential to put on a resume. Pick a professional certificate instead and use what you learn here to finish it.

How to get the most out of it

1. Take it right before your next course, not after. The techniques are most useful when you have real material to apply them to immediately.
2. Practice recall on the course itself. After each video, close it and write down the key points from memory. You'll be practicing the main technique while you learn it.
3. Try one Pomodoro a day. Pick the subject you've been putting off and commit to 25 minutes, without worrying about how much you get through.
4. Set up spaced repetition early. Start a flashcard deck for your next certification while you take this course.
5. Pair it with something for your well-being. Studying while working full time is stressful. Our review of Positive Psychiatry and Mental Health covers the other side of keeping your brain in good shape.

Bottom line

Learning How to Learn isn't a career credential, and it doesn't try to be one. It's something more useful: a short, free, research-based course that changes how you approach every difficult subject afterwards. Focused and diffuse thinking, chunking, recall practice, spaced repetition, and process-over-product procrastination fixes are the habits that separate people who finish long certification programs from people who don't.

If you're about to make a lateral move into a new field, spend a few evenings on this course first. It's likely to save you far more time than it takes.

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you enroll through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Course details are based on Coursera's published listing as of October 2026 and may change, so check the course page before enrolling.