Determine student learning style
What is your favorite or preferred way or tool to determine a students learning style?
Hi Shannon ,Thanks for your post to the forum. Here are some learning style inventories to try:
http://people.usd.edu/~bwjames/tut/learning-style/stylest.html
http://www.ldpride.net/learning-style-test.html
http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html
Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
Susan Polick
Hi Danielle, Thanks for your post to the forum. Your willingness to share your own personal learning story is an excellent opening to your students! Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
Susan Polick
Do you have any ideas or fun questionaires for the first day of class that would help me to gain knowledge of the various learning styles of the students in my class?
When it comes to finding out or determining my students learning styles I start by giving a intro about my self and let them know about my different ways of giving and taking information and how sometimes even us as instructors have to find our steping stone to help us understand. Let them know what my weak spot were and how I over came them as a student. And the class would follow my lead by introducing themselves and letting me know what their styles were and what worked best for them. I have not had a class or a student that felt like they would be judged if they shared that information. That is also a ice breaker for the class if I know everyones learning styles and weakness I pair them up with classmates that can be of help in their area of weakness.
Hi John, Thanks for your post to the forum. Would you mind sharing the link to the survey that you use - it sounds amazing! Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
Susan Polick
Hi Andrew, Thanks for your post to the forum. If you have your students take an inventory of learning styles I don't see how there could be a problem with an overly flexible professor. What we need to do is just vary our delivery as much as possible in every class. Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
Susan Polick
I used a survey questionnaire that allows the student to exam the different styles of learning while deriving at his/her own individual style of learning. Composed within this questionnaire survey, students are presented with differing styles as they complete the questionnaire (auditory, visual, written and kinesthetics), once they have completed the questionnaire, colored in their most preferred style of learning, while listening to the instructor give directions, they can perform hands-on demonstrations with their assigned partner to determine the real hiddened truth about learning styles. Students always walk away with smiles on their faces and much discussion.
Do you know of any good ways to integrate this into the classroom? One could have students take one of these quizzes during the first class period, but that might leave the wrong impression - some students would try to take advantage of an overly flexible professor. Perhaps it would be most useful for long-term purposes - after several terms of students taking a survey, see how the numbers break down at the campus.
