Learning Styles & Teaching Strategies

Learning Styles &Teaching Strategies Applications in Library & Information Literacy Instruction Michael P. Sauers, MLSMemorial Library, SUNY Cortland 10 January 2005

Learning styles • What are the different learning styles? • Auditory • Visual • Kinesthetic & Tactile http://www.chaminade.org/inspire/learnstl.htm

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

Visual learners… • Try to see words • Prefer not to talk but don’t 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

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

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

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

Learner Confidence Cont’d • 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.

Pareto’s 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 20:80.”www.public.asu.edu/~dmuthua/pareto's_principle.html • As applied to computers and library resources, 80% of users take advantage only 20% of available features/resources.

Applying Pareto’s 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%.

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.

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

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

Kinesthetic & Tactile • Hands on • Works best when dealing with technology.

Which works best? • Unless you happen to have a group of students that all have the same learning style and you’re 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.

Learning Styles & Teaching Strategies