Way back in September 2009 at the beginning of my Digital Media course I took a short test to show what learning style I have. We were given a short description of our results and it was left at that. Now nearly 5 months later we have an in-depth lecture on learning styles with our guest lecturer Geraldine Gray.
Learning styles can be roughly broken down into 5 groups:
- Channel or mode of learning: How information is taken in.
- Cognitive strengths in learning: How we remember things we have learned.
- Manner or style of learning: How a person process information.
- Personality type influences: How your personality affects your learing.
- Types of leaning behaviour: Types of intelligence.
Each person takes in information differently and we each have our preferred way of absorbing it. This is the “manner” or ” mode” of learning and is broken into 3 channels:
Visual: Visual learners remember best from seeing information. There are two different types of visual learner however, visual spatial learners and visual linguistic learners. Visual spatial learners will learn best looking and diagrams, charts and videos while visual linguistic learners will learn best looking at written information.
Auditory: Auditory learners learn best when they hear the information being presented to them. They learn best from listening to lectures and discussing topics.
kinesthetic: These learners benefit best from getting a hands on approach to learning. These learners benefit greatly from field trips and physical demonstrations.
Most of us are a mix of these three channels. Geraldine explained that we tend to have and equal mix of these up until the age of 8, then as we get older we become more geared towards certain channels of learning.
Cognitive strengths in learning: Information must pass through 3 modes before being utilised. They are as follows:
Linguistic – verbal communication, watching.
Non linguistic – kinesthetic, tactile, auditory and taste.
Affective – feelings, emotions and mood.
The next topic we covered was how our personality affect our learning. The Myers Briggs MBTI model describes how a person perceives the world and make decisions.
By choosing what best describes your personality from the following list you can find yourself on the above chart and see if its correct for you:
Extraversion (E)————-Introversion (I)
Sensing (S) ——————— Intuition (N)
Thinking(T) ——————-Feeling (F)
Judging(J) ———————- Perceiving(P)
I found the lecture very interesting as I have never thought about my style of learning before this course. In case you were wondering I seem to be mainly a Visual / Kinesthetic learner.
