ASSESSING YOUR LEARNING STYLE.

Owing to the 21st Century’s demand for life long learners, it’s helpful for you to develop your own strategy for learning because until you’ve learnt how to learn , then will you be able to learn something new. Learning Styles may be used at no cost for noncommercial purposes by individuals who wish to determine their own learning style profile and by educators who wish to use it for teaching, advising, or research. There are four broad dimensions of learning that learners of both today and yesterday have used or are definitely using. However its not a guarantee for one to have only one learning style but it should be a guarantee for one to strike a balance between different learning styles. It’s always good for a learner to keep testing each style in the quest of determination of their learning style. And also depending on the challenges before a Learner, he or she may find that they have got to employ another learning style so as to solve the challenges before hand. Active and Reflective Learners Everybody is active sometimes and reflective sometimes. Your preference for one category or the other may be strong, moderate, or mild. A balance of the two is desirable. If you always act before reflecting, you can jump into things prematurely and get into trouble, while if you spend too much time reflecting, you may never get anything done 😊 . “Let’s try it out and see how it works” is an active learner’s phrase; “Let’s think it through first” is the reflective learner’s response. If you are an active learner, you tend to retain and understand information best by doing something active with it—discussing it, applying it, or explaining it to others. Reflective learners prefer to think about it quietly first. Sitting through lectures without getting to do anything physical but take notes is hard for both learning types but particularly hard for active learners. Active learners tend to enjoy group work more than reflective learners, who prefer working alone. Sensing and Intuitive Learners. Everybody is sensing sometimes and intuitive sometimes. Here too, your preference for one or the other may be strong, moderate, or mild. To be effective as a learner and problem solver, you need to be able to function both ways. If you overemphasize intuition, you may miss important details or make careless mistakes in calculations or hands-on work; if you overemphasize sensing, you may rely too much on memorization and familiar methods and not concentrate enough on understanding and innovative thinking. Even if you need both, which one best reflects you? Sensors often like solving problems by well-established methods and dislike complications and surprises. Intuitors like innovation and dislike repetition. Sensors are more likely than intuitors to resent being tested on material that has not been explicitly covered in class. Sensing learners tend to like learning facts; intuitive learners often prefer discovering possibilities and relationships. Sensors tend to be patient with details and good at memorizing facts and doing hands-on (laboratory) work; intuitors may be better at grasping new concepts and are often more comfortable than sensors with abstractions and mathematical formulations. Sensors tend to be more practical and careful than intuitors; intuitors tend to work faster and to be more innovative than sensors. Sensors don’t like courses that have no apparent connection to the real world. Visual and Verbal Learners In most college classes, very little visual information is presented: students mainly listen to lectures and read material written on whiteboards, in textbooks, and on handouts. Unfortunately, most of us are visual learners, which means that we typically do not absorb nearly as much information as we would if more visual presentation were used in class. Effective learners are capable of processing information presented either visually or verbally. Visual learners remember best what they see—pictures, diagrams, flowcharts, time lines, films, and demonstrations. Verbal learners get more out of words—written and spoken explanations. Everyone learns more when information is presented both visually and verbally. Sequential and Global Learner. Sequential learners tend to follow logical, stepwise paths in finding solutions; global learners may be able to solve complex problems quickly or put things together in novel ways once they have grasped the big picture, but they may have difficulty in explaining how they did it. Sequential learners tend to gain understanding in linear steps, with each step following logically from the previous one. Global learners tend to learn in large jumps, absorbing material almost randomly without seeing connection, and then suddenly “getting it.” I know very well that after most people have read this description they may conclude incorrectly that they are global learners since everyone has experienced bewilderment followed by a sudden flash of understanding. What makes you global or not is what happens before the light bulb goes on. Sequential learners may not fully understand the material, but they can nevertheless do something with it (like solve the homework problems or pass the Test) since the pieces they have absorbed are logically connected. Strongly global learners who lack good sequential thinking abilities, however, may have serious difficulties until they have the big picture. Even after they have it, they may be fuzzy about the details of the subject, while sequential learners may know a lot about specific aspects of a subject but may have trouble relating them to different aspects of the same subject or to different subjects. Guess what’s left now 😲, Adapt Your Style. And always remember that the more senses we use in learning, the better we retain what we have learnt in our minds.