understanding learner characteristics is an essential part of effective communication. Students come from different backgrounds, with different expectations. It is important for an instructor to be conscious of these issues, and to lead each class in a way that accommodates different types of learners.
Once you understand the learner's characteristics, you can provide alternatives for decision-making, course assignments and group work. You want to make everyone feel as comfortable as you can.
Hi Vonda,
A very simple concept but one that has to be focused on if we are going to be successful as instructors. We must know our students and build our instruction around those needs.
Gary
In my experience understanding the learning characteristics of the variety of students in the classroom helps the instructor prepare the materials as well as how to present different topics. By knowing your audience; a teacher, trainer, or presenter can focus on how to present the information so that every individual in the class can get what they need out of the class.
Hi Christine,
The work you and your faculty is doing is great. Learning as we all know is complicated and is not just a rote process through which information is given and received. By knowing personality types, multiple intelligences and learning preferences instructors have many more options available to them as they plan their courses.
Gary
The understanding of the characteristics of your learners is crucial to setting up your courses.
Whether it is ages, gender, learning styles, disabilities, outside experiences and events in the students' lives...they will all impact the student's learning potential in your class.
Being flexible, working with the various learning styles and personality styles, while being cognizant of the positives and negatives involved in the other characteristics can help make the classroom successful for all of the students.
We have completed 'Insights" training in our system, which works off of Carl Jung's personality types. The training takes it to a higher level where the focus is on how the different personality types interact and methods of effective communication. As my faculty go through the training, they start to develop a common language to use with the students (all students are also required to go through the training) to help them communicate with each other more effectively, which enhances their learning and minimizes the frustrations as best it can.
I agree Patricia - it is great to stylize their classes - it makes it more meaningful to the students.
Hi Patricia,
You make a number of good points but your last sentence says it all for instructors. We have to be credible if we are going to have any success as instructors.
Gary
Hi Torri,
Great to hear. I love it when instructors are excited about their teaching and the opportunities to impact the lives of students. Keep up the good work.
Gary
Hi Megan,
Your fist day survey is a good idea in several ways. One students can share how they best learn or prefer to receive course content. The other key point is for those students that haven't thought about how they learn it causes them to pause and think about how they do learn and how they can be effective as students. It is a win win for everyone.
Gary
Hi Torri,
Right you are. By using the three areas as a foundation you can adapt or adopt your instructional delivery to target the students more effectively.
Gary
Hi Ronald,
This is a good point about balancing instruction to meet the different learning preferences of students. You have to be very flexible in this area as the class dynamics can change very quickly.
Gary
If you understand that a particual student responds better to visual learning aids then you could incorporate things such as power point presentations to meet that need.
A solid foundation and plan developed from learner characteristics found in a classroom will generate better outcomes for the students.
When instructors "stylize" their classes to meet the needs of their clientele; everyone wins. The information is shared and received, and hopefully applied in the appropriate situation. Just as teachers have styles they are most comfortable using, so do students have styles that make the acquistion of knowledge easier, realistic and practical.
We need to meet these clients needs if we want to retain studnents for future classes. Our "credibility" is also dependent upon our successful delivery of information.
Knowing the learning styles of your students is essential to setting up your lecture, you need to have the ability to adapt your lecture to any of the learning styles in class room, this may require additional prep time but will make the course run much smoother
By knowing your students, and how they learn, you are able to create a student-centered learning enviroment.
Helping to understand the learner characteristics aids me to facilitate the best learning approach for each student; aids in providing student success in the classroom.
I agree that it's easier to teach someone when you know their learning style. That is the main reason I love teaching at a career college, because classes are small and there's more teacher, student contact.
When I put my lesson plans together I incorporate hands-on, lecture, as well as class discussions too. My class is majority hands on, so I have to make sure that they are getting the theories behind why they are doing different procedures.
The more we know about our students, the better we can ascertain what will help them learn better and/or better keep their interest. It's the same situation as knowing your audience when producing a piece of writing--the more you know about their background, their experiences, their wants and needs, the better you can tailor class experiences for them.
