A Learning Sprint is a five-phase, adaptive process to get really good at something. It can compress months of learning into just a few days. It is often done over five days, but it can be done in an afternoon, or over several weeks. We've run these with organisations and groups of kids. We're told they're much more fun than traditional classes.

Learning Sprints enable you to

• learn new things fast.

• are applicable to pretty much anything besides sports.

• build new learning and collaboration techniques for future learning (learning how to learn)

What do you need? It depends on what you're trying to learn! To undertake a sprint, all you really need is a time constraint, a goal and access to domain expertise (this could be a course, book or other resources)

The most effective sprints combine the intensity of a hackathon, the sense of adventure and collaborative spirit of a road trip and the wisdom of an expert in a guided masterclass. Hackathon x Road Trip x Masterclass.

You adapt exactly what happens in each phase by selecting from our suite of over 40 learning techniques. There are some mandatory techniques in each phase. The 5 Phases of the process are called UFAST.

UFAST:

(U)npack: Unpack the uncertainty. This is similar to @ScottHYoung 's meta-learning. The goal is to map the concepts and the learning journey by selecting from the 40 learning techniques. You'll also set your own success test.

(F)acts: Define the concepts, write your own definitions you created in you concept map in the previous phase. The goal is to recall all of them, possibly with flashcards or setting up a spaced repetition system.

(A)nalogies: Assimilate the analogies and models. Help learners to create their own analogies which map facts to their own world or work. The goal is to draw it and start talking about a domains story and models.

(S)trategies: Soak up the strategies, the procedural knowledge (skills). Practice executing some of these things an start applying them to your project. The check at the end of this phase is to teach it to the other learners. This is generally the most fun and insightful for pointing to gaps in a learners knowledge

(T)est: Check that you completed your learning and see where there's gaps by completing your success test you defined in the upack phase. If this is set well you can see how effective you're strategies were and where you can improve.

The outcome of a Learning Sprint depends on the context. The most important result from our perspective is that learners can apply the UFAST process when learning anything new. In the Unpack phase, you set the success test. It's often a mini project, crafted collaboratively with the domain expert and supported by our project guidelines. At the end of the sprint, you'll apply the theory to the success test project to produce some form of sharable artefact. Often it's a podcast episode or article. If you're coding, maybe it's a prototype project. Maybe you're learning anatomy and you create a 3d model of a body! 

A well-designed sprint would also ensure that learners achieved the sprint success test, thoroughly enjoyed the process and changed the way they view their own learning capacity.