Since my last blog post, my group has gotten busy creating a course outline, description, and slide presentation. Through this process I have learned about trial and error in course building. With plenty of information to cover, the question becomes in what order should I share it? My experience as teacher has given me confidence in ordering information in a way that will effectively convey its importance and application. With information outside of my wheelhouse, in this case how to use Workday, I have striven to accept trial and error and develop a willingness to circle back to areas of a project after they are completed.
I have also learned about learning styles this week. As a teacher, my undergrad classes honed in on learning styles and the importance of “differentiation” in the classroom to meet each of these styles. I found it comical to see the full list of learning style dichotomies in Paul Kirschner’s Stop propagating the learning styles myth. The sheer number of ways to categorize learning styles makes it near impossible to integrate each idea into the classroom. This article overturned much of what I believed as an educator about learning styles. Perhaps our pursuit to put learners in neat boxes that would inform how we teach them is too individualistic, it may be moving us away from cooperative learning in classrooms.
Since reading the article I have begun to think it’s time to return to results based evaluation of how learning best occurs. It would not surprise me if my 17-year-old students believe they learn best from videos because they love watching videos. However, their scores in the aggregate reflect better learning from lectures and reading. As a learning professional, it is my duty to discover what is best suiting my classroom and use those methods to the best of my ability. It is also worth acknowledging that adult learners have a much easier time conceptualizing learning and therefore determining how best they can learn. An adult learner may identify their learning style more accurately than a young student.
After reading Kirchner’s article I now feel that (1) the learning styles I believed about myself have changed since returning to college as an adult, and (2) learning styles are not well researched enough to base instructional design on. As a young student I believed I learned best by reading and listening, and that is probably true. However, that means I largely ignored other means of learning that would have benefited me. Turns out, according to the VARK survey, I am a Multimodel learner who learns best visually and kinesthetically. This doesn’t surprise me now as I have had such a good experience in the learning technologies program which has challenged me to learn from and create these types of learning experiences.
I also believe that these learning styles are too limited in the scope and too various in number to truly put into practice. This becomes even more challenging when creating instructional design that may be viewed by hundreds of learners. Instructional design would do better to focus on adult learning theory and less on learning styles to determine the content and methods of learning. Overall, I believe any person can learn from any resource if they are driven enough and I hope educators and instructional designers will not put learners in boxes that could limit their potential.
Jessica White's Learning Technology Blog & Portfolio 