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Understanding Students’ Learning Styles to Enhance your Teaching by Anoop Singh Grewal Oct 5 th , 2011 Biomedical Engineering GK-12 program. PLEASE SHARE - Your name. - How do you think you learn best. - What kind of presentations techniques really get to you during a class room.
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Understanding Students’ Learning Styles to Enhance your Teaching by Anoop Singh Grewal Oct 5th, 2011 Biomedical Engineering GK-12 program
PLEASE SHARE- Your name.- How do you think you learn best.- What kind of presentations techniques really get to you during a class room.
By end of this workshop, you will … • Gain insight into your preferred learning styles • Discover the different varieties and flavors of learning styles • Learn how to incorporate them in a class room 3
What is a learning style? Learning styles are various approaches of taking in, organizing and processing stimuli or information. They involve educating methods, particular to an individual, that are presumed to allow that individual to learn best.
Discover your personal learning style • Take ~ 5 min to fill out this quiz: • www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire • Key is at the end.
Matching learning styles • Find people who scored the highest in the same category as you • Get together and discuss ways you prefer to learn • Generate a list to answer the following: • What kind of class activities/presentations appeal to you? • How do you prefer to study?
Overview of different styles Fleming’s VARK model • Visual learners • Auditory learners • Reading/writing-preference learners • Kinesthetic learners
Visual Learners • Pictures, plots, charts, diagrams • Films, demonstrations • Memorize by visualizing the information (e.g. words) • Like making illustrations in notes • Concept maps.
Auditory Learners • Listening to lectures, not reading books • Listening to music, etc - while studying • Reading out aloud to themselves • Oral exams
Read/Write Preference • Written explanations • Reading books • Written notes • Post-it everywhere NB: Many don’t include this as a separate category and call the rest as VAK model 11
Kinesthetic Learners • Learn by doing things • Have difficulty sitting passively through lectures • Move around while revising things • Like experiments, group activities etc.
Are there other styles? • Kolb’s Model: Kolb, David (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. • Want to learn more about your learning style, personality style, brain dominance…check out this resource and try some quizzes • http://appl003.lsu.edu/cas/learningjourney.nsf/StudentHome?OpenForm • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU5LoCLGMdQ
Mini lesson • Make mixed groups • For one of the topics listed, generate a lesson plan that appeals to all of your learning styles • Be prepared to share! 17
What is this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4f4rX0XEBA&feature=related 18
Conclusions Please share: • Any students with new perspective ? about your own learning OR teaching others
Conclusions Remember that everyone falls in a unique place in the spectrum of learning styles
Conclusions Varying your instructional methods will help meet your students’ diverse learning needs.
Conclusions • Don’t change everything! • People are a mix of various styles. • Just try one unique activity at a time and see what works best for you and your class.
More resources: see handouts • Vark learning quiz: www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire. • Learning activities: http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/ILSdir/styles.htm. • LSU website for learning strategies and more: http://appl003.lsu.edu/cas/learningjourney.nsf/StudentHome?OpenForm. • A great discussion on how to appeal to specific learning styles: http://www2.gsu.edu/~dschjb/wwwmbti.html. • A recent article about the design of a Web-based Educational system with Learning Style Adaptation. (available through Cornell): Popescu, E. J. of Computer Assisted Learning, 2010, 26, 243. • A recent article highlight some of the skepticism about learning styles. Martin, S. Teaching and Teacher Education, 2010, 26, 1583. 23