Why your Learning People courses start at the very beginning
Starting from the basics when upskilling is essential for building a strong foundation, enhancing memory retention, and preparing effectively for exams. While it may feel slow, starting with the basic leads to greater success in achieving your career goals.
When upskilling or retraining, it’s normal to want to make progress as fast as possible. If you already have some familiarity with a topic, it can feel unnecessary, or even boring, to go over things you already know; it can be tempting to jump to new topics or skills that will quickly broaden your experience.
However, having delivered training for over fifteen years, we know the most effective way to study and set yourself up for your exams is to start at the beginning of the course material – to start with the basics and work your way forward from there.
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As our Head of Education, Mark is passionate about ensuring Learning People delivers world-class curricula and training for people who want to launch or progress their careers in IT, Coding, and Project Management.
Why? The main reason is that mastering (or re-mastering) the fundamentals gives you a solid foundation that allows you to approach complex topics with more confidence later in the courses. By following the course programs in the correct sequence, following the order of modules from the very start, you’ll get an optimal learning experience that builds your knowledge layer by layer, ensuring you’re ready for your exams.
Put it this way: if you were a casual jogger and planned to run a marathon, you wouldn’t just try to run 26 miles out of the blue in your old running shoes. You’d want to make sure the fundamentals of your diet, workout gear, and running technique were correct, and then steadily increase your mileage leading up to the race. By doing this, you’d perform much better on the day. The same goes for your studies leading up to the exam.
It’s nothing personal
Understandably, going back to the basics can feel tedious or maybe even patronising, particularly if you are returning to your studies at a later stage of life. Try to remember: starting at the beginning, and re-covering the basics, is good practice for anyone when studying a course, regardless of their prior knowledge or intelligence. This is about setting yourself up for success further down the line.
You might have started studying because you were inspired by role models in a certain field or industry, and starting on the basics might feel like widening the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Try to remember that that person also had to start somewhere; you’re simply seeing the outcome of all of their own hard work.
Benefits of starting at the start
It helps you avoid overwhelm
Starting something as big and important as a course syllabus can feel overwhelming. Whether you’re completely new to the subject matter or you have prior experience, starting a course at the beginning might bring into focus the work that’s ahead of you.
This is why covering the fundamentals is important. Breaking a huge goal, like becoming a Cyber Security Analyst or a Project Manager, into smaller chunks, like completing course modules, can help it feel more achievable – it can make the long marathon feel possible. Remind yourself that it’s okay to (re)familiarise yourself with the basics and take it one module at a time.
It strengthens your memory
Revisiting basic and previous knowledge is also fantastic memory training. It strengthens retention and secures new knowledge in your long-term memory. Revisiting a topic also allows learners to deepen their understanding by finding new elements of the material that they hadn’t considered before. In fact, it can be a risk to assume that you completely understand a topic; this can leave you with knowledge gaps you didn’t know you had, and make you unaware of any recent industry or technological developments.
It gives you the best chance of passing your exam
As I’ve mentioned above, working through the course modules in order, from the start, is the best thing you can do to set yourself up for success on exam day. The course programs are designed to follow a certain sequence, and following it is the most effective path to gaining the knowledge and skills you need.
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