Learning Styles

I thought I'd do my first blog on the VARK and FELDER learning style tests we were encouraged to take in chapter 1 of "Conquering the Content."

The two questionnaires did not take long to do and revealed some new info. The VARK came out about where I thought it would (see below) but the FELDER had a few surprises.

Learning a bit about my own learning styles definitely does make me more sensitive and aware of the varied styles of my own students so that alone was worth the cost (even though it was free!)

OK, here are my VARK scores:
Visual:             7
Auditory:         5
Read/Write:     6
Kinesthetic:     5

Conclusion: I'm a "multimodal" learner with a slight predilection for visual learning.

Felder Scores:
Sensing vs Intuitive:       Here I"m waaaaay on the right with an "11" on the "Intuitive" side of things.
Visual vs. Verbal:           Dead Center. Ahhh, balance.
Active vs. Reflective:     5 on the side of "Active."
Sequential vs. Global     5 on the side of "Global"

The 11 (strongly intuitive) kind of threw me and I'm not sure I'm happy about it. I definitely am that way, just not sure I"m happy about it.

My digital media students and I will sometimes joke about our learning styles compared to, say, engineers. In film film making we often talk about how a scene "feels," something an engineer would find utterly baffling. Imagine Kevin Timmer talking about circumference or biomass engineering and asking his students to see if the results "feel right." Yet we do it all the time because it works. It's a very intuitive way of working. But not all my students function this way (most do). I'm glad I took these tests simply because I'm not much more aware that not everyone learns the way I do ... and that means I need to teach in a variety of ways to help students, but also look for creative solutions for those who have completely different approaches to mastering material.