Update: Aug 9, 2020
Important: Read This First!
I'm at the #WriteTheDocs conference today so just a short note for now and I hope to extend this later via comments or a second post. So stay tuned.
For now, thanks to the awesome community here, I was made aware of the fact that the idea of Learning Styles has no scientific evidence behind it. I just tweeted this to share my own journey here.
I want to research more but my understanding is this - talking about learning styles as alternatives (different ways in which people can learn) is a good way to think about it. But we should not make the assumption that we have learner styles (where we are born with the ability to be better with one style than another) because there is no evidence this is true.
Rather, as the article points out, a good way to think about this is that each of the four learning styles - and there may be more - are a 'tool' in our learning toolkit. How we choose to use them is up to us, and we may have preferences that guide our choices but they should not be seen as just that - preferences - and not as factual basis for personalization
To everyone who shared the article and weighed in on the comments, a huge thank you. One of my resolutions is to learn in public so that I share not just my journey, but also make it okay for everyone to try-fail-learn without fear. You all have made it possible for me to show there is learning in everything ♥️
It is for that reason that I will leave my original article (below) untouched and add this prefix to set context. It is important for me that I also remember the evolution of my thinking, and not just the end results.
If I get something wrong, please please do weigh in on the comments! I love to hear from folks and engage in conversation!
Original Post Starts Here
If you follow me on Twitter or read this series of posts or follow my #sketchthedocs journey, then you know that I'm obsessed with beginners, learning journeys and types of learning, especially visual!
So this morning I posted this tweet:
And I want to use this post to dive a bit deeper!
We all learn differently!
Did you know there are many different types of learners? And that the type of learning style that works for you might very well be different from that which works for your friends, colleagues or family?
The truth is that our education systems and cultural mindsets tend to focus on collective learning strategies (that scale to large groups of students) without necessarily asking how effective that strategy is for individual learning needs.
More importantly, we often don't provide any alternative learning options for those who don't fit the defaults.
In my case, in both childhood and adulthood, I struggled with the traditional learning approaches (many lectures, reading & writing assignments) and the annual "running of the gauntlet" called the finals. I got great grades but it was due to sheer persistence, and incredible amounts of effort and help (from family, friends, tutors, past students' notes etc.). And it should not have been that hard or require that much privilege.
Though I didn't make the connection till recently, my modus operandi was note-taking. I took copious, detailed notes on everything. In fact, my engineering college notes were legendary - I'm told photocopies were sold in a local book stall for those who never bothered to attend classes. It's not because they were exceptional but because they were comprehensive. It was as good as being in class.
I wrote everything down - a habit that persists to this day - because I realized quickly that I couldn't always understand or recall things that were said to me, but I could (and did) once I wrote them down. I used colors. I drew pictures. I had lists. Today we'd call that sketchnoting. At that time, it was just me trying to cope with 12+ subjects, numerous classes and what I perceived as my own deficiency of understanding.
Fast forward to today, and the only difference is that I share my writing on social media, and talk about visual storytelling as the key to communicating complex concepts to diverse audiences in an inclusive manner. And I no longer see it as a weakness, but as a super-power!
Learner Types: V-A-R-K
When I started digging into what the various learning types are, I discovered VARK Modalities
- VISUAL ➡️ prefers graphs, maps, diagrams & viewed resources
- AURAL ➡️ prefers spoken content or conversational resources
- READ/WRITE ➡️ prefers text-heavy documentats and resources
- KINESTHETIC ➡️ prefers practical usage (examples) resources
Each of these is a learning preference and chances are each of us is better at learning one way than the other. In fact, a common stat indicates 65% of us are visual learners (or have a visual learning preference). And 50-70% of users are multimodal in that they have more than one learning preference.
Why shoud we care?
We are facing a unique situation with COVID where remote work and social distancing are driving more students to learn and skill themselves online. A new generation (gen-Z) may very well grow up with an online-first learning experience where traditional classroom lectures and group activities take a back seat in favor of video chats, online portals and self-guided discovery.
This could be an opportunity to drive more personalized learning across all our education, training and documentation efforts!
The takeaway is this.
If you create technical content or documentation, or if you are an educator (or a student) - ask yourself: is there an alternative form of this information that would help me learn the topic or concept better?
So here's a call to action for all of us:
If you can't find a version using the learning preference that suits you - then CREATE IT! And share it out publicly.
Because chances are, there are hundreds and thousands of others just like you, who are looking for just that alternative. And your pebble could launch the avalanche that helps everyone.
What's your learner type?
For the longest time I just assumed I was a visual learner because of my observed preferences.
Recently I learned about the VARK Questionnaire - takes just a few minutes to assess your learning preference and scores you on the 4 types - visual, aural, reading/writing & kinesthetic.
Here is my result
Yes! Finally I can actually say that I have data that shows that I do in fact favor visual (and kinesthetic) learning over traditional lectures and textbook-based curriculum. This aligns with my own observations - I learn best by sketching out concepts, understanding (and seeing) patterns of behavior, and then working on real usage examples or projects that help solidify that learning.
What's next?
As they say in their Understanding the Results page, this indicates preferences not strengths. There are no wrong answers, just guiding strategies. Here is what I took away from that website:
Multimodal Strategies implies you have multiple preferences and ideally should be able to switch between them, or mix them up, to provide optimal learning paths. This can be valuable in teams where different members have different preferences.) Pick the common strategy if you want collaborative experiences ("learn together) or different strategies if you want coverage ("diverse perspectives").
Visual Strategies implies you learn best from visual cues (graphs, charts, layouts, fonts, colors, workflows etc.) Draw more. Doodle ideas. Explore sketchnoting and build a visual vocabulary for your focus area.
Aural Strategies implies you learn by listening, talking, questioning and discussing ideas with others! Join meetups and online discussion groups where information is shared in a more conversational way. Participate in digital water-coolers and brown-bag or unconference sessions where there are less slides and more 1:1 or 1:many converasations on a topic.
Reading/Writing Strategies implies you learn by reading, writing down and analyzing large volumes of information. The key here might be project management tools and techniques that _organize information (lists, calendars, workback plans etc.,) in ways that help you manage, recall and connect various ideas._
Kinesthetic Strategies implies you do your best learning by looking at examples and practicing techniques with simulation or functional prototypes. The key here is to find and play with lots of examples (hack, reproduce or extend) until you 'see' the patterns and can apply them intuitively to new problems.
My preferences are visual and kinesthetic, so I hope to build on these. But I also want to push myself to develop my aural and reading/writing skills in intentional ways. More on that later.
Your Turn!
Take the Vark Questionnaire and share your learning preferences below. Let me know what you think. Does this align with how you see yourself?
Top comments (11)
Hasn't this been debunked already?
psychologicalscience.org/news/rele...
I'm not saying that you shouldn't explore various learning strategies, but the idea that you fit in some special learning box seems to be untrue.
I guess I'd put this in the same "box" with personality tests. They are a great introductionary tool into knowing how people might be different to you, and maybe get some clues on how to work with different minds. However if you go too much into it and put yourself into a box based on what a test gives as an answer and live by that, then you take the wrong route.
Hey all -- thank you so much for raising awareness of this. As you might tell from my initial post, I wrote a tweet and went from that to post within a short spell of time, so this was definitely a spontaneous posting. I should have done more research and I didn't.
And I can't thank you all enough for sharing your comments and providing me more links to educate myself! Deeply appreciate this discussion and hope you all keep sharing.
In the meantime, I added an update to my post above (see "Read This First") to share these resources and hopefully make this a teachable moment for me and others. I do think that there are different ways that people CAN learn (visual, aural, read/write, kinesthetic being ALTERNATIVES or TOOLS that help us) - and where I went wrong was to assume that we each had a default LEARNER style that was individually optimal. The data shows no scientific evidence of this but rather that all of us are multi-modal and capable of using any style necessary.
What makes specific styles successful is likely a combination of context (certain styles better for learning certain things) and practice (my preference for visual makes me use those tools more, which in turn might create learning habits that appear more successful).
My bigger takeaway is this - that learning is about trying things and learning from all our experiences. And learning "in public" has the benefit of being able to leverage community intelligence like this, to course-correct faster. So thank you 😍🙏🏽
You got it a bit wrong. The zero in Aural is not "why", but how much you give it value. It is not the input, it is the output. What you said is the explanation, the input, and that is why Aural is 0. When doing the test you reflect each answer you give to the expected result you will get. And that is why this test and personality tests are such a failure.
For example I get 100% introversion in every personality test I take, because I value it so much more than extroversion, and thus each of my answers I give gets reflected into the result. You could even say I'm purposefully aiming for hitting the 100% introversion score.
I'm not 100% introverted. I just value being introverted. Same for you: you are no incapable of learning by aural means. You just don't value it at all.
EDIT! Seeing the post I replied to got deleted I guess my message might've been a bit too blunt by being so direct. My intent was not to cause shame or other negative feeling, so if it did I'm sorry.
I agree with the central thesis here - which is that all these "Tests" are in some sense indicative of our own biases and preferences, and not rooted in any scientific or genetic predisposition to be better at one than the other.
Going forward, I am going to think of these as learning strategies and not personalized styles. Each strategy uses a different combination of our senses to provide input and derive insight. And what we get out of each is likely to be proportional to how much we prefer (prioritize) and practice (upskill) our learning journeys using that option
My take on that is: experiment, find what works best for you, stick with it, and don't forget to get back in exploratory mode from time to time.
What you're describing is different way you can learn. Different medium. I would say that the medium you choose for learning doesn't depend on the learner, but what you want to learn.
For example, if you want to learn something very abstract you can't really practice in real life or with a project with concrete goals (mathematics, for example), you need examples, exercises, and test yourself.
If you learn something you can practice easily: have a goal, practice, fail, learn, and go back to practice. When you begin to reach your goals, come back from time to time to the experiment zone to discover new ways and grow.
I wrote about that here if somebody is interested.
Thank you for sharing - that was an awesome article (and a very detailed one) so props to you for writing it. My favorite section there was on transfer learning:
"Transfer is applying the knowledge from the learning context to another context. For example, it could be applying the programming knowledge your learned at school to the side project you always dreamt to build."
I think that is actually one of the most valuable skills we can learn in technology (and one I constantly try to teach my 11yo) - look for and find reusable patterns that you can take and apply to other problems. From the learning perspective, I think the use of metaphors and analogies is also hugely impactful in helping people go from knowledge (what is it) to understanding (how does it work? how can I use it)
🙏🏽
Glad you liked it!
I totally agree for the use of metaphors and analogies. One needs to be careful not to use the wrong ones (which can confuse the learner), but well used they are powerful tool indeed.
Subjective determining what type of learner someone is. But what is true in my case anyhow is that certain teachers teaching styles suit me better than others.
I have to agree - our learning preferences may not always correlate well with learning effectiveness but if they push us to explore and learn more, then any style should be fine. I do think that teaching styles are an area for more research. Teacher effectiveness can be based on topic but the most effective teachers I had tended to use a mixture of styles to engage students and facilitate understanding.