There are many different theories of types of learning styles. Most learning style inventories generally purport to identify students as one of four types of learners: visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile. Some learning style inventories have many more than these four general types. These inventories range from those developed by individual instructors with a few questions to commercial ones that purport to be correlated to academic success. More information can be found at http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Learning_style.
For a learning style a student is diagnosed as having, the different inventories purport to diagnosis a student's learning preference and give suggestions on what type of classes to enroll and how to study. For example, a student with an auditory preference should enroll in a lecture class in which the instructor lectures and does not require much information to be learned by reading a textbook. A visual learner should enroll in a class where the instructor requires the information in a textbook to be known and assigns several outside readings.
When a student enrolls in a college course, there is no mention as to what learning style the course is designed to meet in the college catalogue. If fact, all colleges courses have more features in common than differences. An analysis of the learning tasks required for college courses reveals the following:
- Read a textbook with over 500 pages of information. Sometimes, additional books and outside reading are assigned in some classes.
- Read, on short notice, outside reading assignments in magazines, books or the web.
- Learn and understand the meaning of between 400 and 1500 new vocabulary terms.
- Recognize and understand for each new term introduced in the course the following:
- Examples and what are not examples
- Cause and effect of each of term introduced
- Similarities and differences of other terms that share the same classification
- Know which facts about the term must be memorized and which facts can be looked up in reference material.
- For regular classes it is required to attend three hours of a lecture a week.
- For online classes all the instruction is obtained by reading.
Therefore, the traditionally learning styles given are of little value in predicting how information must be obtained in a college course.
In 2004 Coffield and others did an extensive analysis of 13 different models of learning styles and issued a report titled "Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning: A systematic and critical review. This report emphasizes the danger of labeling students with a type of test that is not valid and reliable.
"These central features of the research field - the isolated research groups, the lack of theoretical coherence and of a common conceptual framework, the proliferating models and dichotomies, the dangers of labeling, the influence of vested interests and the disproportionate claims of supporters - have created conflict, complexity and confusion. They have also produced wariness and a growing disquiet among those academics and researchers who are interested in learning, but who have no direct personal or institutional interest in learning styles. After more than 30 years of research, no consensus has been reached about the most effective instrument for measuring learning styles and no agreement about the most appropriate pedagogical interventions."*
*Coffield, F., Moseley, D., Hall, E., Ecclestone, K. (2004). Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning. A systematic and critical review. London: Learning and Skills Research Centre http://www.lsda.org.uk/files/PDF/1543.pdf
What learning inventories do not state is that learning styles change from day to day, week to week, and month to month for several reasons:
- Person's mood at that time
- Subject to subject
- Person's level of expertise
- Person's intrapersonal communication ability
- Person's background in the subject area
- Popularity of the course instructor or subject
Why must college students be prepared to learn most of the information in a college course by reading?
- Information received by listening is obtained at 100 words-a-minute or less. Information is obtained by reading 2 or 3 times faster. Because of all of the information required to be known in ones college courses, it is difficult or impossible to obtain it all by listening.
- When information is being obtained at 100 words-a-minute or less, it is difficult to keep ones mind from wandering
because the mind is thinking or "running" faster. When reading, it is possible to obtain information at the rate at which ones thinks. Obtaining information at the rate of thinking is required to maintain the concentration needed to focus on obtaining information.
- Much of the information required to be known in college courses is given online. Research assignments frequently require information to be obtained online or in journals. This requires reading skills.
- Obtaining information efficiently requires being able to vary ones rate of reading: skimming, scanning and critical reading. The rate information is obtained by listening cannot be changed.
- It is impossible to learn the hundreds of new terms introduced in a course by listening to a definition of them. For each new term introduced in a course it is necessary to know the following:
- Examples of it
- Cause(s) of it
- Effect(s) of it
- Features it shares with other terms
- Features it does not share with other terms
Six items of information is required to be known about a term introduced in college course. If 500 new terms are introduced in a course this means 3000 items of information have to be known.
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Organizing and condensing the information in a textbook chapter into an outline or cognitive map that can be used for review and self-testing requires reading skills.
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When reading to understand information, it requires sometimes scanning back to the prior sentences just read to determine the relationship connecting different items of information. This can be done only visually or by reading.
Why would a college student preferred method of obtaining information be auditory?
- Lack of interpersonal reading skills: A student who lacks intrapersonal reading skills finds information coming into the mind to be uttered in one unvarying tone with the same pitch, intonation and lacking stress. This student knows from experience that it is difficult to obtain information visually or by reading.
- Slow rate of reading: Some students read below 200 words-a-minute. These students find it difficult to concentrate long enough to obtain the required information from a textbook chapter. A student whose rate of reading is below 100 words-a-minute cannot keep focused long enough to obtain the required information from a textbook chapter.
When learning new information, everyone should try to use as many of the senses as possible especially when retaining information. The Learning Wizard meets this need by developing and emphasizing the use of the following:
Visual - Cognitive maps are created to visualize the information given about a term or topic similar to the way information is stored in the mind.
Auditory - Intrapersonal communication or self-talk is emphasized to use when reading to obtain, retain, and recall information.
Kinesthetic - Kinesthetic learning are purported to learn things by doing something. The physical activity of creating an outline or cognitive map requires activity using one's hands to do something with the information being obtained.
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