1. Discovering How You Learn

2. Your Turn
Which of your current classes would you describe as your favorite? Do you think that your choice has anything to do with the instructor’s teaching style? Why or why not?

3. The VARK Learning Styles Inventory
VARK Inventory focuses on how learners prefer to use their senses
Knowing your VARK score can help you develop your own study strategies and do better in college
Visual
Prefer to learn information through charts, graphs, other visual means
Aural
Prefer to hear information
Read/Write
Prefer to learn information displayed as words
Kinesthetic
Prefer to learn through experience and practice

4. The Kolb Inventory of Learning Styles
Focuses on abilities we need to develop in order to learn
Effective learners need four kinds of abilities:
Concrete experience
Reflective observation
Abstract conceptualization
Active experimentation
Opposite styles of learning: Abstract-concrete and Active-reflective
Four discrete group of learners:
Divergers, assimilators, convergers, and accommodators

5. Your Turn
Where do you see yourself in the Kolb Inventory? Are you more like a diverger, assimilator, converger, or accommodator? How can you use this knowledge in your courses?

6. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Represents a “psychological type” on the combination of four different scales
Extraversion (E) vs. Introversion (I)
Indicates where you direct your energy and attention
Sensing (S) vs. Intuition (N)
Indicates how you perceive the world and take in information
Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F)
Indicates how you prefer to make your decisions
Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P)
Indicates how you characteristically approach the outside world

7. Your Turn
Do you consider yourself an extrovert or an introvert? Why? Do you ever wish you were like the other? If so, when and why?

8. Multiple Intelligences
Theory of multiple intelligences developed in 1983 by Dr. Howard Gardner
Proposes eight different intelligences to describe how humans learn
Verbal/Linguistic
Logical/Mathematical
Visual/Spatial
Bodily/Kinesthetic
Musical/Rhythmic
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal
Naturalist

9. Your Turn
Do you agree with Howard Gardner that there are eight styles of learning? Why or why not?

10. When Learning Styles and Teaching Styles Conflict
Instructors tend to teach in ways that conform to their own styles of learning
When you recognize a mismatch between how you best learn and how you are being taught
Take control of your learning process
Don’t depend on your instructor
Employ your own preferences, talents, and abilities to study and retain information

11. Learning with a Disability
Different learning disabilities affect people’s ability to interpret what they see and hear
Attention disorders
Daydream excessively, easily distracted
ADD, ADHD
Cognitive learning disabilities
Dyslexia—a developmental reading disorder
Learning disabilities are not related to intelligence

12. Tech Tip: Branch Out
Finding ways to adapt to teaching techniques that lie outside your comfort zone
For auditory learners
Read your notes and textbook passages aloud as you study
For visual learners
Take notes and illustrate them
For hands-on learners
Build models or spreadsheets, take fieldtrips to gather experience