Impacts on Teaching
Learning Styles
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Visual – learn by seeing
Sometimes divided into visual and read/write o
Auditory o
Kinesthetic
Learning Styles
“Good” learners pick up and remember new material quickly – most likely, you are a good learner!
Which do you think is your learning style?
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Write your name under your predication.
Learning Styles
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Test your learning style: http://www.varklearn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnair e
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Did your result match your prediction?
Write your name under your test result.
Learning Styles
What did you think about the assessment tool?
Learning Styles
o o o o
Potential Issues:
Wanting to select multiple options
Not feeling that any options fit
Situational – a test that leans toward reading will produce a different style than one that leans toward calculation
Real-life scenarios don’t necessarily correspond well to academic situations
Learning Styles
Problems with Learning Styles Assessment Tools: o
Low reliability (~0.6)
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Expect to get the same results each time you administer it, but this happens just over half the time
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Why?
Test may not be a reliable measure
Learning styles change based on interpretation of question, age, and experience
Learning Styles
What cognitive research tells us:
Help students more by presenting them with multiple modalities o bolsters weaker areas o draws on multiple memory pathways
“Preferred learning modality” changes based on the type of material.
Material is typically stored independently of any modality.
Memories stored in terms of meaning, not if you saw, heard, or interacted with information.
Attempts to match material to learning style may benefit some students, but will actually harm others.
Learning Styles
Case Study:
Lesson – Molecular Structure
Class #1 – build ball & stick models
Class #2 - read text and look at pictures
How would kinesthetic learners and visual/verbal learners score on a later test in each class? What is your prediction?
Learning Styles
Case Study:
Results: o
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Class #1:
Kinesthetic – 95% (enjoyed lesson more)
Visual/verbal – 80%
Learning Styles
Case Study:
Results: o
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Class #1:
Kinesthetic – 95% (enjoyed lesson more)
Visual/verbal – 80% o
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Class #2:
Kinesthetic – 70%
Visual/verbal – 70% (enjoyed lesson more)
Learning Styles
Interpretation of Results:
For a given lesson, one instructional technique turns out to be optimal for all students – the one that best fits the content!
Learning Styles
Fitting Modality to Content
Example: Understand dynamics of carbon cycle
I’ve tried:
Static images and talking through
Static images with students reading and asking questions
Images that students have to connect with arrows
Narrated animation
Walk through cycle with each student being a “carbon atom”, then diagram their pathway & compare with those of classmates
Learning Styles
Learning Styles
Vexing Topic to Present: suggestions?
How could this topic be presented:
Visually?
Read/Write?
Auditory?
Kinesthetic?