Learning How to Learn in an Age of AI

Think of the last time you sat down to learn a new framework or language. You skimmed the docs, watched a video, maybe opened ChatGPT — and a week later, when a colleague asked you to use it, almost none of it was there. That experience isn't a personal failing. It's a brain doing exactly what brains do when learning is set up the way software learning usually is.

This full-day workshop is a working tour of the cognitive science that explains why some learning sticks and most doesn't. You'll see how the brain forms "sets of links" — and how AI models give us our clearest picture yet of how those links become fast, automatic expertise. We'll work through the techniques the science keeps showing matter most: retrieval practice, spaced repetition, interleaving, focused and diffuse modes, sleep, managing cognitive load, the working memory bottleneck (with a live test of your own), and the role of dopamine and curiosity. We'll also look at how habits of thought — including the "mental fortress" that experts are most prone to — quietly shape what you can and can't see.

Throughout the day we'll keep generative AI in view as a tool inside the toolkit — how to use it as a metaphor generator, a Socratic partner, a custom tutor, a pre-test maker, a retrieval prompt — and how to use it without quietly outsourcing the thinking that makes a developer good in the first place.

You’ll leave with a working understanding of how your own brain learns, a set of techniques you can start using the next time you sit down with something new, and a clearer sense of how to keep growing in a field that no longer pauses to let you catch up.