My Learning Style

Today I completed Soloman and Felders’s Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire to get an indication of my own preferred learning style/s.

 

The results indicate that I am:

• a strongly reflective (as opposed to active) learner;
• fairly well balanced sensing and intuitive learner (possibly with a slight preference towards intuitive learning);
• slightly more visual than verbal learner; and
• a slightly more sequential than global learner.

Overall, I would say the results were quite accurate. However, I wouldn’t have described my preference for reflective learning as being ‘very strong’. Despite preferring to think quietly first about new information, I don’t always like to work alone.

My learning style suits learning experiences like individual reading, reflecting, summarising, strategies like PMIs, SWOT analyses, etc., rather than group work or active experimentation. Being a visual learner, I tend to learn well from visual learning experiences including videos, images, powerpoint presentations, graphs, flowcharts and mind maps. I also tend to learn well when information is provided sequentially, in steps which build upon each other or can be pieced together logically.

I find it interesting to think that a single learner may have different preferred learning styles at different times. I wonder after years of university study with learning primarily delivered through teacher-centred delivery methods, whether I might have developed stronger sensing and verbal learning styles than I would otherwise have preferred?

Profiling learners in order to cater for learning styles/preferences

Given the likelihood that a single classroom will comprise learners with a diverse range of learning styles, teachers will never teach in a way which suits everyone all the time. I have found it valuable to understand my own learning style and to recognise the diversity in learning styles even within the EDED20491 cohort.

In order to cater for the diversity of learning styles in a class, I would profile students by:

• establishing rapport with students;
• observing their responsiveness and engagement in various learning experiences; and
• asking them questions designed to highlight their learning style (e.g. adapt existing examples like Soloman and Felder’s Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire to suit the age group of the learners).

How to support the range of learning styles in a traditional classroom of 25 students

I guess the important thing as a teacher is to utilise a diverse enough range of pedagogies that learners are offered a balance between those styles which allow them to learn most easily (meaning they feel comfortable and included) and those which they find more challenging but which allow them to build on their adaptability/flexibility. Obviously, a narrow teaching approach will benefit only a small number of learners and will risk the other students becoming disengaged. Resonates well with this quote by Eistein:

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".

In a traditional classroom of 25 students, I would design my lesson planning to include strategies which suit the various learning styles. I would use the results of the learning styles profiling exercise to inform my planning.

Examples of how I might support the range of learning styles include the following:

• Instead of doing group work or individual work in isolation, I might ask students to reflect individually on a topic by answering/posing a set of questions, then have them form small groups to brainstorm further before discussing as a class. This would engage both active and reflective learners.
• I would use visual aids when presenting orally to the class and include exercises like constructing diagrams, charts, mind maps etc. to engage visual learners.
• I would attempt to include optionality in my lesson planning where appropriate. For example, after doing a group activity, I could give learners the choice of doing an oral presentation or a written presentation.
• I might form groups for particular exercises based on the learning styles profiling and develop specific activities best suited for each learning style.
• Ensure that the physical structure of the classroom is conducive for different learning styles (e.g. by placing visual learners close to the front, providing a visually stimulating environment, creating ‘shared’ spaces for group work etc.).

How does ICT support differences in learning styles?

Pedagogies that incorporate ICT have the potential to engage learners with various learning styles. This is in part due to the multimodal nature of ICT, which frequently combines audio, visual and tactile stimuli. ICT describes a vast array of technologies and tools which, each of which has different functionalities and applications which can be tailored to a particular purpose.

Although ICT can be used to support particular learning styles (e.g. social networking is well suited to active learners, blogging is suited to reflective learners etc.), I think it is important that all learners are competent in accessing and evaluating digital information in a range of different ways.

References

Soloman, B. A. and Felder, R. M. (undated) Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire. Retrieved from http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html.