We as teachers must aremember that we are creating a learning environment for all students. It will help to enhance more learning by introducing and creating a variety of learning methods for the different learning styles and watch the world of creativity unfold.
Teaching in a manner that satisfies the adult learners learning style allows them to feel comfortable with the educational process. It promotes self confidence and the ability to self direct. When an instructor can deliever material to students on many different levels of understanding and styles of learning it ensures that all students will have equal oppertunity to get involved in the activities. I like to talk with my students before a course begins and find out what experience they have on the topic prior to getting started. I then encourage the students to share their knowledge with the reat of the class. Inthis activity I can see how they choose to deliever their material and get keyed into their learning style. One tends to teach in the way they learn the best.
Hi Sandra - I also use games and have been pleased to see that even my adult students enjoy them! Susan
Because students are so diverse in their learning styles, it is equally important to have a diverse teaching strategy. Game playing is what I have done to engage the students and for most it works very well. Games such as a related Jeopardy usually have everyone participating. Methods need to be varied as powerpoints or all lecture works for some, but not all.
I work on having different ways of lecturing and providing the information that is needed to meet the different learning styles in the classroom. The age range that I am teaching is 18 to 70, so I have all of the learning styles in the classroom. At times (depending on what we are working on) it can be difficult to support all of the learning styles
We are a "hands on" technical post-secondary school, and we do a great job at addressing the tactile, visual, and autitory learners but i feel most of the faculty conducting "lab" classes fail to address the written word learners in the classroom. In a lab setting in addition to our time constraints it is extremly difficult to address this group of learners, we do address these learners with nightly reading assignments, but many of the adult learners do not do the reading assignments due to many different reasons.
Most of our adult learners need to see, hear, and do to grasp the concept being presented to them. I believe that a technical school like ours attracts a certain type of adult learner. Thet are attracted to the "hands on" training for a reason, they may not know or understand that they learn best by seeing, hearing, and doing.
I do believe that to be an effective facilitator a person must address all learning styles to effectively present material.
I think providing different approaches and resources that complement the learning styles of my students enables them to not feel "left behind" in the class. If you teach only to one learning style, many students don't absorb the information, they feel they're falling behind and get discouraged.
Students preferentially take in and process information in different ways: by seeing and hearing, reflecting and acting, reasoning logically and intuitively, analyzing and visualizing, steadily and in fits and starts.
When mismatches exist between learning styles of most students in a class and the teaching style of the professor, the students may become bored and inattentive in class, do poorly on tests, get discouraged about the courses, the curriculum, and themselves, and in some cases change to other curricula or drop out of school.
It is important to provide approaches and resources that complement the learning styles of your students, for the simple fact that everyone percieves and process information differently. And in order for students to percieve and process information accordingly, accomodating the different learning syles is of great importance. Everyone learns differently, and every learning style needs to be accomodated so that students will be able to understand required and useful information.
Most of our demographic have already tried to be successful at a "traditional school" and were not. We have the opportunity that some professors at those schools do not. We can address multiple learning styles and cater directly to our students more. This is mostly related to our class size. By adapting to our student's learning styles, we are giving them a better chance to become successful.
I believe having a variety of learning styles in your classroom helps you reach every student. You are then able to keep the entire class engaged and avoid boredem.
we have to give our students like what we needed to when we were students in order to have maximum benefit of learning
My lectures are specific to the books my students are using. They can highlight more and really listen to the lecture. When students know they are able to view hard copies of lecture materals, they are not worried about writing notes and concentrate more on the subject at hand. Later, they can usually find the time to return to the written material and prepare themselves for testing.
By, Edwardo Mojena
Because it benefits the students way of knowing their learning style and how to use it for the types of materials to apply to.
Knowledge and values depend on context and individual perspective. When we understand how our students learn, we can tailor our lessons to them to facilitate comprehension. This can help students become more work-ready for a professional environment.Varying our instructional strategies helps our students in two ways: 1) we can reach students with diverse learning styles and 2)we give students skills to be competent in every learning style.
In my class I start out with the power point lectures and then complete hands-on exercises or discussions. It is very important to use all the learning styles and reach all of the students.
It is important to know how your students learn and vary styles of delivering new information.
If the student does not learn the material, the is a greater failure rate. A failure is not acceptable in my class, due to ME not reaching the students needs. Some are slower than others and meeting their needs is what I consider to be obligation.
Hi Margaet - Thanks for your post to the forum. I am so glad that you got some good information from this module! most people can eventually learn to adapt somewhat to other learning styles, but as educators why would we not want to give them what works best? Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
I have been an RN for most of my career. I did not realize the different types of learners until I started doing this lesson. I think back when I went to school and now realize why I did so poorly in some classes and did well in others. I found I am a visual/tactile learner. I also realize why I had trouble keeping the inservices interesting to everyone. I taught the way I was comfortable. I feel after my experiences, this is absolutely very important to know about your students.
Thank you,
Sue Luikart
