Have you asked yourself, "Why should I learn this?" Nothing is more frustrating than learning some abstract, mumbo-jumbo idea from your studies that you won't get to use in real life. Questions like "Is it essential to learn Trigonometry? Calculus?", "Why do we need to find x?"
We can boil down these questions into one - "why?"
Why?
Answering the question "why" is crucial if we want effective learning. What's sad is that there is no direct answer to each "why."
Now, why is that? One answer is that we only see ideas as they are - Math is Math, Science is Science, History is History, and so on.
There's a term for this - "siloed education." We compartmentalize knowledge into distinct subjects. Most educational institutions follow this model - we follow a structured curriculum based on the discipline in which we flow from one abstract topic to the next. The advantage of this is that it's easy to manage; however, in the real world, solutions to everyday problems require various ideas from different subjects.
To illustrate, say you are someone who wants to build robots. You'll need to learn how to create one. Hence, you would take robotics as your course. At its core, to develop robots, you would need to learn Math, Mechanics, and how to code.
You would take these classes separately in a school that follows the traditional siloed model. One course is about mathematics, another is for mechanics, and another is for coding. Doing this, however, has some potential drawbacks:
- You might excel in one class but not in the other courses. For example, you might be proficient in coding but not Physics or Calculus. As a result, you may be able to program a robot, but you'll find it challenging to optimize its movements. Your problem-solving ability will become isolated.
- You might have solid theoretical knowledge of each subject, but solving most real-life problems would be difficult. Creating a robot would require a comprehensive understanding of the different subjects and how they must work together - geometry to understand its position in space, physics to identify its movement, and programming to manage its operations. You'll need more practical experience to see how these ideas should work together to develop solutions.
From these drawbacks, we can observe the heart of the problem: the isolation of ideas. Concepts by themselves won't survive. It might be easier to learn or manage, but we won't become effective problem-solvers.
If that's the case, let's return to our example and find the connections among these subjects. To do that, we need to answer the "why" part in the context of robotics:
- "Why do I need to learn Math?" - Subjects like Mechanics and coding rely on Math to work. It's a universal language that enables us to understand the disciplines needed to create robots.
- "Why do I need to study Mechanics?" - Studying motion, force, and energy is essential to understanding any robot's physical movements and performance.
- "Why do I need to learn how to code?" - Robots are programmable machines - and coding is an absolute must to create these.
The answers to these "why" questions involve blending ideas from different subjects. Discussing the answers to these questions makes studying enlightening, and we gain a deeper appreciation of these abstract ideas.
We need more resources and tools that support an "interdisciplinary" way of learning - and this is where WeTheStudy enters.
Introducing WeTheStudy
WeTheStudy is a learning platform that aims to produce competent problem-solvers. To accomplish this, learners should see the connection of ideas. We have a dedicated tool to help assist in interdisciplinary learning - the Tree of Knowledge.
Our tool consists of ideas from multiple disciplines represented as nodes connected by branches. Together, they form one massive network.
- We organize these nodes in a structured and progressive manner such that ideas flow smoothly from one topic to the next.
- The tool emphasizes the connection among different subjects. It helps you see how one topic connects with another topic. How abstract Math topics will relate to Engineering concepts, for example.
You can check the Tree of Knowledge out to see it for yourself. At this point, we are in the process of developing it. We aim to make it an innovative tool for "connective learning." We hope it will help learners worldwide see the bigger picture and become competent problem-solvers.
