Our tendency to gravitate towards a particular discipline in Entrepreneurship, Science, Technology, or Engineering (ESTE™) can evolve over time, consistent with how our preferences in other areas may evolve over time. And our breadth of learning across disciplines (transdisciplinary) is predictive of our ability to apply conceptual thinking within a discipline that we may have never experienced (ESTE™ Leverage Blog). Across government, academia, industry, and the society at large, upskilling and reskilling are important success factors driving career satisfaction as well as economic and societal growth. Inherent in reskilling and upskilling is the ability to employ various cognitive strategies to improve our ability to process information more deeply, apply this information to new situations, and experience long-lasting knowledge retention and future application.

Various cognitive strategies are employed in the learning process to enhance cognitive skills.

What are cognitive skills? These are core skills that we utilize on a day-to-day basis to read, think, analyze, learn, recall, focus, and rationalize. What are cognitive strategies? These are types of learning strategies that can enhance our ability to improve or enhance our cognitive skills. The concept of cognitive strategies in learning have been used across multiple disciplines, including education (Weinstein 2018; Olson & Land), architectural design (Lawson), and clinical medicine (Winn 2019). The recognition and implementation of cognitive learning strategies in education demonstrate our progress in this area as research has transitioned from teacher-focused to learner-focused [Kimmons & Irvine 2020].

Examples of cognitive learning strategies include:

• Imagery, Visualization (formation of vivid mental images related to new information)

• Reflection, Summarizing, Paraphrasing (reviewing the knowledge, skills, information to consolidate learning by identifying main ideas or organizing information)

• Spaced retrieval (recalling information at scheduled, and increasingly longer, intervals)

• Elaboration, Making Connections (connecting new information with information that is already known; expanding schemata)

• Generation (learning new information by active participation; searching memory, working through a problem, engaging in effortful thinking)

• Dual coding (using different types of stimuli to encode information more effectively)

• Interleaving (alternating between types of information rather than learning a mass of information in an isolated or liner fashion)

• Concrete examples (using examples to supplement content that is more conceptual in nature)

Novel ‘generation’-type cognitive learning strategies are now emerging out of the classroom and into industry with online learning platforms like Quizlet, Memrise, Duolingo, and other e-learning applications. The dependency on e-learning to improve learning outcomes is only accelerating due to increasing computational power, improved data analytics, and classroom learning gaps resulting from the global pandemic. Individuals, institutions, and corporations utilize these strategies - often in combination - to invoke different perspectives and thinking modalities that will help inform real-world solutions.

How ESTE™ contributes to the e-learning ecosystem and supports cognitive strategies.

It is important that as ESTE™ joins the e-learning ecosystem, we advocate for adhering to recognized or established learning pedagogies so that ESTE™ Leverage provides evidence-based resources, activities, and guidance. Because ESTE™ provides a framework to aggregate domain (content) knowledge across all these areas, another cognitive insight may result, where learning is independent of domain knowledge resulting in amplification of cognitive strategies such as:

• Interleaving, where learnings in one ESTE™ discipline can be mobilized, extrapolated, and applied to learnings across another discipline even though the topic matter or discipline is unrelated

• Reflection, where ESTE™ provides a framework for categorizing information, enforcing the relational attributes of the ESTE™ quadrants

• Making Connections, where the ESTE™ framework provides a schema or process map to mentally arrange previous experiences

• Dual coding, where ESTE™ provides a visual framework to help contextualize how deep knowledge development can occur within disciplines and between disciplines

The deployment of ESTE™ as an e-learning framework will provide a means for students of any age to engage in STEM and Entrepreneurship independent of their school curriculum. To the extent that we gravitate towards a particular discipline in Entrepreneurship, Science, Technology, or Engineering over time, our cognitive skills will be enhanced as each of these disciplines require different perspectives and approaches to problem solving thereby adding to our armamentarium of cognitive strategies.

How to integrate cognitive strategies.

1.    Take a few minutes to understand the various cognitive strategies. Which ones resonate with you the most? If you’re not already aware, this exercise may teach you something about yourself – e.g., you’re a visual and auditory learner; you’re really adept at finding the commonality in things to help ‘bucket’ ideas; you have a difficult time forming visual images in your mind

2.    With your next project, incorporate a different cognitive strategy to inform an approach to problem solving

3.    In your mentoring and/or teaching efforts, explore and introduce different cognitive strategies to your learner

[Weinstein Y, Christopher RM, Sumeracki MA. Teaching the science of learning. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implication. 2018 3:2; Olson CB & Land R. Cognitive Strategies Toolkit. https://www.adlit.org/topics/comprehension/cognitive-strategies-toolkit; Lawson. Cognitive Strategies in Architectural Design. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140137908924589?journalCode=terg20; Winn AS et al. Applying Cognitive Learning Strategies to Enhance Learning and Retention in Clinical Teaching Settings. MedEdPORTAL 2019; 15:10850; Kimmons R & Irvine J. 50 Years of Education Research Trends. https://edtechbooks.org/50_years]

ESTE® Leverage - founded in the belief that Entrepreneurship, Science, Technology, and Engineering are innate in each of us - grounded in the science of learning & assessment – dedicated to the realized potential in every individual.