What is your Learning Style?
One common problem in education is the heavy reliance on transmission of information. For instance, the lecturer shows a PowerPoint presentation, talks about the information in the slides and that’s it. At the end you’re expected to write back that information in the test to get a good grade.
On the flipside, people who learn on their own have a fundamental advantage: they can choose how to approach learning. Each person has an optimal learning approach, for instance, some are comfortable with a sequential learning path while others prefer to jump around the learning resources. Maybe you don’t like to read this article, instead you’d prefer to listen to it. If we can identify our optimal learning strategy and capitalize on it, we will not only improve the success of our study but also enjoy the process more.
Today my objective is to bring this advantage to your attention. When you’re learning on your own, please try to identify how you learn best; from there outline a strategy based on the learning resources you have available, balanced with your preferences.
Felder-Silverman Learning Styles Model
To better illustrate what to take into account when learning, I will briefly introduce the Felder-Silverman Learning Styles Model and its four dimensions. While the topic of learning styles is somewhat divisive in Academia, I choose this model because it is one I’ve studied in the past and I think it generalizes well to most areas of study.
The Felder-Silverman Learning Styles Model breaks down the learning style into four dimensions by identifying how a learner prefers to:
- Receive information: preference between visual and verbal/written communication;
- Perceive information: whether a learner prefers to sense information or to intuitively perceive it;
- Process information: whether the learner transforms the received information into knowledge with a hands-on approach or through reflection; and
- Understand information: preference between a sequential learning path (with a sequential mastery of topics) and a global learning path (namely through summaries and non-linear paths).
Conclusion
While short, I hope this article elucidates how you can capitalize on your natural study preferences. Studying is not all about getting a good grade at the end of the semester, we should focus on actually learning what we are studying. Thus, to acquire that knowledge we should rethink our learning strategies. We all have our own learning style, a style that is optimal to support our learning process, so why go against it?
I would also like to point you in the direction of the original article by Richard M. Felder and Linda K. Silverman, which you can read here. Beyond that, you can also complete the Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire, which evaluates your learning style based on the Felder-Silverman model.
