Learning Styles

Everybody has their own individual methods of absorbing, processing and storing information.

Some prefer visual cues or speeches, doing things or thinking about them.

How somebody learns is their learning style, these styles are categorized into four pairs; active or reflective, sensitive or intuitive, visual or verbal and global or sequential.

Active or Reflective 

Active learners retain information best by doing practical work on the subject.

They prefer group work to working alone.

Active learners tend to become bored easily in class when they are taking notes, making note taking an ineffective method of teaching them.

Reflective learners work best alone, preferring to think about a topic rather than perform activities.

They are much more content taking notes and writing than doing group work, therefore note taking in class is a more effective teaching method than activities.

 

 

 

 

Sensing or Intuitive

 

 Sensing learners tend to like learning facts and statistics, working with quantitative information.

Sensors prefer to stick to tried and tested methods for problem solving instead of innovating.

They are patient with details and tend to be good at memorising facts and performing hands on work.

Intuitive learners often prefer discovering possibilities and relationships as opposed to learning facts. They like to innovate and solve problems creatively and are more open to grasping new concepts quickly as well as being more comfortable with abstractions and mathematical formulae .

 

     Visual or Verbal

 

Visual learners learn better using pictures, diagrams, demonstrations to absorb information, they tend to become bored without visual stimuli. Due to this, lectures or other verbal presentations are usually wasted on visual learners if they lack a variety of visual components.

Verbal learners like to learn by listening to speakers, or by reading to themselves. They are not as good at absorbing visual information, tending to become overwhelmed in presentations that are image intensive. They are more comfortable in lectures when they can take notes to read to themselves.

               Global or Sequential  

Sequential learners like linear, logical progression through information. They prefer to start at the basics and build upon them step by step, making logical sense of the topic.

Global learners take a less organised approach, learning in no logical order. They absorb apparantly unrelated information and let it 'click' into place.

My Preferred Learning Style

 

Take the learning style text here. 

According to the test I have a mild preference for aural learning.

 This means that I will learn best by listening, discussing the topics and remembering notable examples, stories or jokes from lectures.
Being an aural learner also means that I find it easier to concentrate and learn while listening to music.

I can make use of this knowledge to aid my learning in class and working on assignments, mainly by listening to music when I am working as it helps me zone into the work and block out all other distractions.

Additionally I can create audio recordings containing information on any topics I have difficulty with and repeatedly listen to them throughout the day, passively picking up on what is being said in them.

Relying on this learning style over the others is helpful to me as music prevents videos or other media from grabbing my attention and therefore distracting me, meaning I am focused solely on the work.

In classes it is more helpful than other styles as lecturers tend to communicate verbally much more often than with diagrams or interactive activities.


However, I don't believe that this will help specifically with my PDP, except potentially when trying to improve my guitar playing by listening to songs.