Learning Styles

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Learning Styles Teaching Strategies

• Applications in Library Information Literacy
  Instruction

Michael P. Sauers, MLSMemorial Library, SUNY
Cortland 10 January 2005
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Learning styles

• What are the different learning styles?
• Auditory
• Visual
• Kinesthetic Tactile

http//www.chaminade.org/inspire/learnstl.htm
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Auditory learners

• Sound out word
• Enjoy listening but are impatient to talk
• Forget faces but remember names
• Easily distracted by noises
• Prefer the phone
• Call the help desk

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Visual learners

• Try to see words
• Prefer not to talk but dont like to listen for
  too long
• Forget names but remember faces
• Easily distracted by movement
• Prefer face-to-face
• Seek out pictures and/or diagrams

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Kinesthetic/Tactile learners

• Write words down
• Use gestures and expressive movements
• Easily distracted by activity in the immediate
  area
• Remember what you did with another person
• Prefer to talk while doing an activity
• Will jump in and try something
• Keep trying over and over changing variables each
  time

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Teaching Styles

• Concepts to consider
• Available teaching styles
• Which work the best?

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Learner Confidence

• people are, in general, overconfident. They
  overestimate their ability, and their level of
  knowledge, and their decision-making prowess. And
  people are more overconfident when facing
  difficult problems than when facing easy ones.
• - James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds

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Learner Confidence Contd

• It has been my experience that when it comes to
  computers there is a generational difference in
  the level of confidence.
• Those that did not grow up with computers tend to
  under estimate their skills as opposed to those
  that grew up with computers.

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Paretos Rule

• Pareto's rule states that a small number of
  causes is responsible for a large percentage of
  the effect, in a ratio of about
  2080.www.public.asu.edu/dmuthua/pareto's_princ
  iple.html
• As applied to computers and library resources,
  80 of users take advantage only 20 of available
  features/resources.

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Applying Paretos Principle

• An instructor needs to figure our what 20 is
  being used by the 80 and focus on imparting that
  information.
• This does not mean that the instructor should
  focus on that 20 to the exclusion of the other
  80.

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Experiential Learning

• David Kolb, Case Western Reserve University
• Ideas are not fixed but are formed and reformed
  through experience.
• Bibliographic instruction must give the students
  the experience they need but also give them the
  ability to renew that experience.
• This can be done by focusing on process rather
  than outcomes.

Bodi, Sonia. Teaching Effectiveness and
Bibliographic Instruction The Relevance of
Learning Styles. College Research Libraries,
March 1990.
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Auditory

• Lecture
• Discussion
• Works best for larger non-concrete concepts,
  theories, items where there is no right or wrong
  answer.

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Visual

• Demonstration
• Works best for simpler tasks with not a lot of
  steps.
• Also works for more complicated procedures
  providing theyre broken down into smaller sets
  of steps.

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Kinesthetic Tactile

• Hands on
• Works best when dealing with technology.

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Which works best?

• Unless you happen to have a group of students
  that all have the same learning style and youre
  teaching a topic that lends itself best to a
  single teaching style you need to find the right
  balance of all three in order to accommodate all
  of the students.