Hey! Quick question first: how do you like to learn? My brain loves systems and how things connect, so memorizing a textbook was never going to work for me. I passed PRINCE2 Foundation with 87% (52 of 60) after building myself a study tool with Claude, one gap at a time. Here is how it went, and how you can build yours.
I cannot share my own Atlas, only the method. Why
I love looking at systems and at how things connect and relate to each other. To really understand PRINCE2, I needed to see its whole ecosystem from many angles. Memorizing the textbook definitions wouldn't have done it in my case. This is what I did instead.
The ideas link up along several lines at once: how a project runs over time, who does what, what a project is, and what it is made of. Each piece has a definition, a purpose and an application, and connects to many others.
PRINCE2 is a project management method. The Foundation qualification is intended for project managers and aspiring project managers, and for other staff involved in designing, developing and delivering projects.
I could follow the logic on the textbook pages, but I couldn't hold it in my head. So whenever I got stuck, I told Claude and it built me one more piece. Here is how it went, in miniature. Press Play, or use the arrows to move between steps. The quotes are my real messages to Claude, with the spelling tidied up.
Some pieces were my ideas. When I ran out of them, I asked Claude to look at the whole Atlas and tell me what was missing. Along the way the Atlas also got smaller details, such as a Commonly confused section and a My doubts tab. Some I requested, and some Claude added when I told it about a problem or got stuck. We built it together, one message at a time, and every message was plain language.
Make a plan on what could be improved and ask for approval.
You can do all of them one after another without bothering me.
The miniature above is a sketch. Here is a screen recording of my Atlas as it looked when I studied with it.
Keep in mind that this is my own custom digital interactive notebook. It works for me and reflects how I learned over several days, so it would not suit everyone. It is messy. Sections were added as needed, based on what I already had and where my gaps were, with the aim of closing them one by one. It is a cool tool though, and in theory it could become a great PRINCE2 study aid after a major cleanup. I don't own the content that powers it, so I can't share it. What I can do is teach you how to make your own custom learning tool.
I passed! 87%, 52 out of 60! 🎉
The best known model of learning preferences is VARK, developed by the New Zealand educator Neil Fleming, together with Colleen Mills, in the early 1990s. It sorts learners into four groups: visual, aural, read/write and kinesthetic.
A note on VARK: VARK is hugely popular, yet scientists have found little support for its main promise. A 2008 review by Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer and Bjork in Psychological Science in the Public Interest found “virtually no evidence” that teaching to a person's preferred style improves learning. The modern view is that a mix works best. Richard Mayer's work on multimedia learning (2009) sums up one well-tested piece of it: “People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.” So use every format, and let the subject decide which ones matter most.
Visual first, clearly. I need to see how everything connects. Still, I used all four, and the cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham gave me the reason. His argument is that the content picks the format. A map is the best way to learn geography, and a recording is the best way to learn an accent. A preference is also a different thing from an ability: people who call themselves visualizers do not remember pictures better than verbalizers do.
That matches what happened to me. PRINCE2 is a web of connections, so it needed maps. My wrong answers needed my ears, and the sample papers needed a clock. Read his own summary in his learning styles FAQ and judge for yourself.
An Atlas is one web page that holds everything you need to learn, shaped around how your brain works: cards for every idea, links between them, maps, quizzes and a list of your mistakes. It works for any subject, and you don't need to code. To start you need your material and a rough idea of how you learn. After that you ask for one piece at a time.
Ask for the format that suits your material and the way your head works. A few ideas to start from:
However you learn, say it out loud to Claude: visual, big picture first, details first, listening, hands-on, talking it through, or a mix.
Treat Claude as a companion to what already works for you, and build a hybrid. I kept my handwritten notes and watched the course videos. My notebook is full of colours, just like my Atlas. Mix your own notes, your course and Claude in whatever way suits you.
Check against your source: compare what your Atlas shows with your real material, and ask where each fact came from.
About my own Atlas: I can't share the tool itself. I built it from materials I had for my personal study, and those materials are subject to copyright. I am sharing the method only. Now it is your turn to build your own Atlas, from your own materials, on any topic and around the way you learn.
A small sample: what I show here is a fraction of what AI can do for you. This one was built with Claude. I also have several use cases around Google's Notebook (formerly Notebook LM).