Helen,
Thank you for sharing this example with us. In life we often have to work in areas that may not be our preference such as auditory instead of visual. By offering instruction in different venues you are helping your student to be able to acquire information via other preference areas. By using your own experience you can help your students to expand their learning preferences.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Helen,
I would continue on the path that you are going. I wouldn't worry too much about cheating at this point because the students may be more interested in success that trying to find a way to cheat. Are there any other ways of evaluating the students? I have used different assessment formats when I have students that have test anxiety so they can use a style that is more comfortable for them. Say moving from objective to short answer or case study.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Here's something I found fascinating. When I first started teaching I was almost totally visual and very introverted. I started out teaching very small groups. Then I moved to the actual classroom and became the class clown! Now when I take the surveys I am pretty well balanced between the different learning styles. I also became much more extroverted as well. Anybody else have that experience?
I recently had a class that had extreme test anxiety. Although most of them were kinesthetic and visual (we have them take one of the surveys to find out) I did a guided imagery before the test to relax them and then I brought in music to listen to. I gave them a choice of 'la-la' instrumental, pop, or classical. I was quite surprised that they chose pop. They did better on their test although not every one liked it. I am trying to devise a way that some can use earphones while testing to use music, but there is always the risk that this will promote cheating. Any suggestions?
Erin,
This can be a fun activity for you because you get to be creative in finding alternative ways to deliver your content. Even after teaching the same course for many years I try to incorporate a new activity or learning strategy into the course so that teaching the course remains fun for me and informative for my students.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Venusa,
You make a good point about the value of knowing that learners process information in different ways and if we offer instruction in different ways we will increase the retention rate of the material for our students.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
I think that knowing about different learning styles and intelligences is important in reaching 100% of your students. In this module they said that instructors often tailor their lecture in a way that they would like to learn, and this rang true for me. I have realized that I often would plan out my lecture in a way that would fit my learning style, and understanding the different intelligences has helped me to work on this. It is moor tank that I vary my delivery methods to include other learning styles as well.
Jon,
I think you are right about students that enter the field of dentistry being more visual/spatial. This has been my experience anyway. Your strategy of mixing up instructional delivery and providing additional activities and supports that enable students to decode/recode content are going to pay off with enhanced learning. I wish you continued teaching success as of result of all your effort.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Understanding multiple intelligences is challenging at the same time brings out creativity and teaching skills from faculty. Faculy can create various teaching methodology to deliver concepts in a way that is better assimilated by students.
Just understanding that we all decode and recode information differently will help me be more tolerant of those who struggle with the content,the presentation and the evaluation methods in courses I teach. I need to be more aware of how many of each of the three main learning types I have in each course. By "mixing up" the methods of presentation a bit so that, at least at some times, it is more friendly to either the logical/mathematical/, visual/spatial, or the verbal/linguistic leaners I think everyone will benefit. I teach dentistry skills and my guess is that as a rule we are probably more visual/spatial as a profession. We will see if my guess is borne out by my observations.
Phuong,
Good point because this way the students can process the information in a number of different ways.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
teaching with multiple intelligencies what helps the most is having a agenda with steps.
Shantana,
Key point that we instructors need to remember as we do our instructional planning. We process information in different ways so the more options we have to acquire the content the more options we will have as we internalize it and store it in our long term memory.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Jeffery,
Yes, you will. When you complete the class session and know you have "nailed" the content due to the way the students were engaged and interacting you can stop, take a deep breath and reflect on why you are a teacher. This is what it is all about!
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
I have realized a long time ago that we are all different and with that we have different ways of learning information. I think being aware of this is extremely important and also leads to greater understanding from the students.
if you can teach all four ways at the same time in the same lesson you willbetter reach all your students and meet everyones needs. you will spen less time tutoring individual students if you take a little more time to prepair your lesson to help everyone with different learning styles understand the whole lesson
Students need to see information multiple times before it can be retained. So why not introduce the information using a variety of methods that allow each student to process the information using the method that works best for them. You can kill 2 birds with 1 stone - repetition and variety in instructional delivery.
Charles,
Your thinking and planning is right on target. This is how you get your students engaged and excited about what is being taught.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
By planning an approach that will reach ALL of the students. I believe this can also help students expand their intelligences to learn in the different modalities.
Claire,
This is a important point that is often overlooked as we educate the masses with assembly line methods. The more we can customize our instruction the more effective we will be with our outcomes. In my research over the years I have develop an assessment of the different intelligences of students. The assessment is called the Talent Key. The assessment draws out the three most dominant intelligences that the students have. Then we develop instructional activities that focus on those three dominants. Many career colleges are using the Talent Key with their students and have had great results because of how they customized their curriculum. This is why your point is such an important one.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
