BANGALORE: Mid-level and senior executives today need to constantly update their knowledge.

The general perception that beyond the age of 40 or so a person cannot really learn new skills has been held false by educational psychologists.

Distance learning courses in subjects ranging from business law to computer applications are now offered by leading universities and B-schools with online and classroom modules built in.

Some of them taking these courses would have been considered too old ; they are in their forties and mid-fifties.

Edison, Einstein, Shaw, Winston Churchill are some of the famous names among those who made it to fame and success relatively later in life, some of them carrying on with their learning almost to the end. Concentration improves at a later age because there are not as many distractions as when you were in your twenties, many teachers have found.

There are different approaches to learning at a later age.

For some, it is easy to read from books and lecture notes and transcribing a summary of topics in notebooks as they go along.

For others audio tapes, lessons online and visual aids work better to grasp a subject. For many, a question-and-answer session with a teacher helps better.

Those involved in distance learning suggest that people, say in his forties, taking up a new subject, spend as much time as possible with reference books, in a library or in the privacy of their home.

As each section or chapter is read, they should write down a summary in a notebook for future reference.

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