high in the crackmonkey's tree

In week two, we've begun a discussion of VARK, which is an acronym for a tool to evaluate students' learning preferences. It's a short quiz intended to ascertain a student's preference for learning by Visual, Aural, Reading/writing, or Kinesthetic modes. We each took the quiz and then posted our thoughts about the results, and how we intend to utilize the concepts of learning styles in our courses. I'm going to post my results and comments, to see if it generates any discussion here.

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My VARK results are Visual 9, Aural 12, Read/Write 9 and Kinesthetic 8. This suggests I have a preference for multimodal learning styles, although I do show a stronger preference for Aural learning styles. These results seem very accurate to me. Although Read/Write is the primary learning modality in Western culture, in the biological sciences there can be a stronger emphasis placed on multimodal learning. Students are instructed to “look through the microscope and draw what you see,” or “be able to draw a clear diagram of the Krebs cycle,” or to take the laboratory tools and perform a procedure under supervision. I am curious whether students with multimodal learning preferences are drawn to subjects like biology, or whether success mandates they learn to use multiple learning modes.

I suspect the latter may be true in my case, as I've been predominantly an auditory learner all my life. In college, I quickly realized that if I spent too much time taking notes in lecture, I'd never remember anything the professor said. My preferred strategy was to listen attentively while making a few brief notes, and tape record the lecture so I could go back at a later time and re-listen. Talking about course concepts with a study buddy, repeating things out loud to reinforce memorization; all of these strategies helped me the most. In general, my family always said that if they write something down I'll never remember it. But if they tell me something, six months later I'll be able to recall everything they said in perfect detail. And then there's the matter of what my co-workers refer to as my “mutant ability” to remember song lyrics from the radio; it's not really useful, but it's great at parties.

Getting back to the matter of applying these concepts to our classes, I think using multiple modes of information transfer will be very useful in our online classes. We typically stress visual information, providing graphs, symbols and diagrams in our presentations. The handbooks we supply and the quizzes we administer address read/write learning modes. WebEx recordings provide an aural learning component, and the practical hands-on software exercises will round out the delivery.

I've ordered a laptop. 'Cause I'm going to be taking classes until the end of next winter and it will be crazy not to have one. So. Yeah.