Thursday, October 14, 2010

Learning styles

At the behest of Dr. Williams, I have gone through extensive testing to determine what learning style I tend towards. By extensive I mean that I took two internet tests, though they are ones that have scientific backing, so I suppose that carries some weight. Anyway, knowing your learning style can be important, as if you know how you learn best then you can work out techniques for your classes to frame the information in ways that you can absorb it easily. 
So the tests I took were at http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire and http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html respectively. The results from the Vark test were easier to understand as they were testing along a simpler and familiar visual/aural/read-write/kinesthetic model, personally I am a multi-model learner, leaning visual/kinesthetic. The other test was a little more confusing, testing along four different scales. The more detailed descriptions are here http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/ILSdir/styles.htm but none of you will go so, they are active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal, and sequential/global. The way it's scored you are assigned a number from 11 at one end to 11 at the other. As it turns out I have a strong preference to active learning, am balanced for sensing/intuitive, and have moderate preference for visual and global learning. Because of this, I can improve my learning based around the suggestions in the explanation of the styles. Doing things like finding things to do with information that I am given, like discussing the information with people, along with getting diagrams or interactive material, and figuring out how a topic relates to the big picture so that I can relate any information to what I already know. Stuff like that. As always, the plot moves on.

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