Bill,
It depends what you want to learn and what is the best learning method for you. We all have our own preferred methods for learning new topics and how we learn best. I teach web engineering at a college level and over the many years that I have been teaching I have seen many techniques for learning plus instilling knowledge and none of them have been all right or all wrong.
It has to do with the student. We all learn at different paces, and grasp things at different levels. I have had students where I can mention something one time and they have it, that is all she wrote. They can take that information and run with it. Other students, in the same class, hearing the same information will need much more reinforcement training before they grasp the concept. Much of that has to do with their learning background and the material they have learned to that point. Someone that has a good grasp of math concepts and understands that math is an exact science, picks up programming relatively quickly, it to is an exact science. There are very few, if any, grey areas in programming. It is either a 1 or a 0.
Web development is programming. In HTML and CSS it is a simplistic form of programming, but programming none the less. The pages will only display what and how we tell them. Understanding the flow of the document and the code (scripting language in this example), is 90% of the process. If you understand normal document flow and how we can manipulate normal document flow using our code when developing our pages, you have gotten most of the development concepts.
That is where many people lose the battle. They fail to learn the basic concepts and without those everything else is extremely difficult to grasp.
When I begin a new class with a group of new students, I spend about 10 to 15 minutes with each student, one-on-one. We discuss their background and why they choose web engineering. From their I go back to my office and develop a lesson plan for that student, based on what i gathered in that interview. I try to tailor, as best I can, the learning goals around their strengths. We develop the training around the best ways for them to train and learn. Based on that I have a very high success rate with my students. Some of them are great self learners, others need much more one-on-one and hands on learning. I try to find what works for them.
So how do you learn best? Be honest with yourself and accurately access how you have learned in the past. Once you answer that question the path forward for your learning goals will identified for you. If you need any help let me know.
There is no one path for every person, we are all different and learn things at different paces.
I hope this helps.
