You have made the decision to learn how to fly! After your First Flight, your flight instructor outlines the training curriculum and sends you home with your home-study course. Becoming a pilot is a multi-faceted learning endeavor. You will need to become knowledgeable in aircraft systems, aerodynamics, weather, law, medical factors, risk management, and psychology. If you are like the rest of us, you are not an expert in all these fields when beginning flight training.

How does one become knowledgeable? In our field, most learning happens through home-study. Of course, you will engage in several one-on-one or small group learning sessions during your training. But unless you are enrolled in a collegiate aviation program, you are not likely to be in a large traditional classroom setting akin to primary and secondary education.

Home-study courses are usually online videos, books, DVD courses, audio recordings, or a combination thereof. Whichever method you use, you need to know how to study effectively. One key aspect of studying is converting information into knowledge. Your home-study course is full of information that is the refined data about the subject matter at hand. Knowledge means that you understand the information well enough that you can draw the best conclusions for a given problem or scenario. How do we study so we can transform the information presented to us into workable real-world knowledge?

Online Interactive Video Courses

Let us start with the most common form of home-study today, the online interactive video course. We use such a program at Elon Aviation. Of course, when you sit down to complete a lesson, your environment should be free of distractions. You cannot pay attention to your video lesson with the television playing in the background. Tell the kids they will have to wait a little a while for help with that new math.

The human brain is not like a sponge. You cannot learn by osmosis. Letting the video play while you stare at the screen is not learning or studying. Learning is an interactive process. One of the great things about our online course is that it is interactive. It includes quizzes that give instant feedback about how well you understood the presented concepts.

You may find it helpful to take notes while watching the video. The act of physically handwriting notes -- not typing on your computer -- can help reinforce learning and remembering.

If writing does not seem to help, speaking may be best for you. Try explaining the concepts to a friend, a family member, or even your dog. I can speak from experience. When I passed my flight instructor test, I thought I was hot stuff and had instantly joined the ranks of the experts. After about two weeks of providing flight instruction, I was embarrassed at how little I really understood, and that the FAA even let me be a private pilot! Explaining complex topics to people is a fantastic way to enhance your own knowledge.

Text-Based Courses

If your home-study course is a textbook or you are augmenting your interactive online course with texts, try utilizing reading comprehension strategies. Have you ever read a page in a book and then realized you have no idea what you just read? Dr. Bill Klemm, Professor of Neuroscience at Texas A & M University, suggests reading with purpose, reading with the proper mechanics, being judicious with highlighting, thinking in pictures, rehearsing frequently, and staying within your attention span.

Reading with Purpose

Reading with a purpose employs the learning principle of readiness. You must get your head in the right space to be receptive to what you are reading.

Reading with the Proper Mechanics

Dr. Klemm describes reading with the proper mechanics as physically moving the eyes in a disciplined way. Focus on one “fixation point” to the next fixation in a left-to-right sequence; these points should be on several words per fixation rather than one letter or word.

Be Judicious with Highlighting

If you need to highlight the text you are reading, do so judiciously on only the key points. Highlighting entire blocks of text does you no good when you go back to review.

Think in Pictures and Rehearse Frequently

As you read, think in pictures. As you pause in your reading, form a mental picture of what you read to strengthen the associations for future recall. Use these mental pictures to rehearse frequently, which will further enhance your understanding. If you do not take the time to pause and rehearse, there is no way for you to remember what you read 10 pages ago.

Stay Within Your Attention Span

Finally, you need to know what your attention span is and stick to it. If 20 minutes is your limit, study intently for 20 minutes then take a break to refocus. Unless you are super-human, no one can be productive in an hours-long study session.

Studying should not be a chore. You chose to learn to fly for any number of reasons. Enjoy the journey. Enjoy learning. A good pilot never stops learning. You will make your aviation journey much more enjoyable if you can learn how to study effectively sooner in your training rather than later. For those of us that are not straight out of high school or college and are learning to fly, this may mean relearning how to study.

If one method is not working for you, try another. Sit down with an experienced flight instructor to discuss your study habits. No one is more of an expert on you than you, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to learning.

Regardless of the studying method you use, you will have to figure out how to turn the information from videos, texts, or lectures into usable knowledge. When you are with your flight instructor or pilot examiner for an assessment, know that we are looking for knowledge rather than information. We commonly use problem-based scenarios to determine what level of learning you have attained. Because knowledge is critical to your success as a pilot, you must implement good study habits.

Next week, Kathryn Roberts will introduce you to ways of learning, learning styles, and how to determine your personal learning style.

As a child, Chris Whittle knew he would fly someday. After he completed his first solo at age 16, Chris' flying career has quite literally taken off. In his nearly 20 years of training countless students, he is among the most respected flight instructors in North Carolina. The Alamance County native and East Carolina University graduate has amassed more than 12,000 hours of flight time and has been identified by the FAA as a Designated Pilot Examiner. He has administered more than 1,500 checkrides since becoming a DPE. Learn more about Chris and the rest of the Elon Aviation staff at www.elonaviation.com.