What is your learning style?

During the last few weeks, I was the victim of my curiosity and started reading/researching about the way we learn and how, by knowing that, we can improve our experience with on-line learning, and now I want to share my findings.

Yes, we’re all different, but I’m not referring to the way we look, our race or religion; I’m referring here to the way we learn. Many have theorised about the way we all learn - In fact, psychology has a branch that explores those concepts, which is called Developmental Psychology. Understanding how we learn will help us get the most out of the training we participate in, by using the right techniques to fix the knowledge in our brains and to have the best approach to the lessons in front of us.

There are many theories that describe how we learn, some are based on the way our brain perceives the world others in the way we interact with knowledge. For example, the theory of Multiples Intelligences proposed by Howard Garner in 1983, describes 8 modalities, which’s combination will play a role during the learning process. Also, Andragogy and lately Heutagogy describes the learning process in terms of motivating factors and self-determination.

What all these theories have in common, is that they describe the learning process as a mix of modes/ways/abilities; learning is not a recipe with only one ingredient. At this point, the next common question is “How do I know what works better for me?” To respond that let’s introduce a simpler approach “VAK”.

VAK stands for Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic, this is a basic framework that defines the learning interactions as a mix of the three, having one as the preferred type. As before, it’s not that you’re only visual or only auditory, it’s what your brain prefers, but use the others as complement. In fact, studies have shown that if you are visual, but the only available stimulation is auditory, your brain will do the association to images and you should propitiate it by using your imagination.

At the end of this article I will give you a link to one of the tests to discover your preferred type, but now let’s explore how you can use this new knowledge about yourself to improve your experience with Lynda and to build a better you.

Lynda provides us with different pieces of training but all using video lessons and few courses include material that you can use to reinforce the fresh knowledge, but in any case, you should use what you know about yourself to improve the experience, for example, if you are:

• Visual: while watching, pay close attention to the video and, mentally paint a diagram in your head.
• Auditory: obviously, listen carefully, but also make your own analogies try associating definitions or processes with songs.
• Kinesthetic: start doing, put in action the knowledge with current activities in your personal life or at work, if that is not possible, use simulations.

Now that you know what it means, let’s discover your preferred style. In the web you can search for “VAK free test”, but here is one I found easy to use, do wherever you prefer, the important thing here is that you know a bit more about yourself as we build the next version “Self 2.0”.

Hope you enjoy and share your comments below
Have a great day