This is from the eLearning Guild's email newsletter and is a summary of the full article that's available in the complete journal:
Many e-Learning designers are interested in ways to accommodate the differences between individual learners. Some avenues to do this may exist in human learning styles, if the designer knows about them and can find a way to bring them into the design strategy. In a recent article in The eLearning Developers' Journal, author Bill Brandon explains how designing your e-Learning to accommodate different learner styles will improve their retention and success. The article, "Style Points: Adapting e-Learning to the Learner" begins with a definition of learning styles.
"Learning style" is usually defined as a set of stable characteristics that affect the way a person perceives and interacts with the environment while learning. As such, learning style is an individual difference that can be taken into account when designing the content in any instructional system. There are many learning style models and theories, and many other psychological measures are used by classroom instructors as the basis for adjusting their teaching to individual learners. For example, the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a well-known measure of psychological type frequently mentioned in the literature, as is the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. Gardner's Multiple Intelligences theory is another system that has been used to account for different learning styles.
Apart from these broad theories of intelligence and personality type, theory and formal research on learning style have mainly pursued two other ways to characterize learning preferences. One view is based on understanding the learning process, and the other is based on understanding how people take in, store, and retrieve information. These views are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and they are both important to the designer's understanding. From these two views, three methods have emerged that are designed for the purpose and are in common use world-wide."
He then goes on to describe the three methods. The first he tackles is Kolb:
"The first of the two closely-related learning style theories I'll discuss is David Kolb's learning cycle model. Kolb created the Learning Style Inventory, an instrument that identifies an individual's dominant learning style. The LSI is sometimes called the "KLSI," for "Kolb's Learning Style Inventory" to distinguish it from all the other learning style inventories that have been developed, and it is also sometimes shown with a number following it - e.g., KLSI-3 - to indicate which of Kolb's several revisions it is.
Kolb, probably the best known and most used model in the United States, identified four different ways that people approach learning based on their preferences for the different stages of the learning cycle.
* Diverging: Someone who uses the diverging style (a "diverger") learns by looking at experience from several points of view and by generating lots of ideas. Divergers are imaginative and open-minded, believe they understand people, and are alert to look for and recognize problems. A diverger would benefit from being able to review case studies that don't have "cut and dried" solutions, in order to come up with a number of different ways to solve the problem presented.
* Assimilating: This style relies on inductive reasoning (working from examples in order to derive the "rules"). Assimilators like to come up with theories and models and to do planning. They are very patient, and want detailed background information about theory and practice. Give them a problem where they can apply a theory, or where they can come up with a theory about why there is a problem.
* Converging: Convergers are driven to solve problems and make decisions. They rely on deductive reasoning (applying the "rules" to specific instances). A converger will want "hands-on" examples for which there is only one answer, or where they choose the best answer from several possibilities. Give them a lot of facts to sort out.
* Accommodating: These are the risk-takers and leaders who are compelled to get things done, even if (especially if) it involves taking risks. Accommodators like games, particularly if there is a range of payoffs that depend on the skill with which the game is played. They also do well with exercises that involve multiple scenarios and decisions to be made about allocating or assigning resources.
The article also explains the two other approaches:
1. Peter Honey and Alan Mumford, two researchers in the United Kingdom extended Kolb's model in 1982 by defining individual preferences for each stage of Lewin's cycle. Honey and Mumford's model is best known outside the United States, and is particularly popular in the UK, Europe, and Australia.
2. VAK stands for Visual (seeing), Auditory (hearing), and Kinesthetic (touch and movement). According to this model, one of these senses will tend to dominate the way a learner takes in and processes information, and the way in which that information is represented when stored in memory, with the other senses serving in auxiliary capacities. It is also possible that an individual may use different dominant senses and different combinations of senses for different learning tasks.
Read the article for complete descriptions of each method and a summary of practical ways they can be applied to the design of e-Learning programs. Guild Members, go to www.eLearningGuild.com, log on, and download the complete article now! Guild Associates, we encourage you to Upgrade your membership so you can access this issue of the Journal. Just go to www.eLearningGuild.com and log in, then click "Upgrade Membership" from the main menu on the left, and follow the prompts from there.
Posted by at June 3, 2004 12:08 PM