Example

My Learning Style?

I have often heard people say things such as "I learn through doing things" or "I'm a visual learner..." or some similar item. Frequently I am a little hesitant to buy too deeply into what people say when they fail to learn something. There are many reasons why we fail to learn things and some of them include:

1. The learner is not adapt to that particular media or instructional method (so yes they can have a different learning style)
2. The instruction has been poorly constructed and delivered
3. The student does not have the proper pre-requisites to understand the new material (trying to teach calculus before someone knows algebra)
4. The media and instructional methods do not lend themselves well to the content (teaching visual art with just words)
5. A variety of other reasons... 

In short I do believe people learn different ways, but, I am a little resistant to people using "learning style" as a catch-all to explain their failure to learn something. The truth is typically more complicated and is not always obvious. I personally think one of the greatest hindrances to learning often  point #2, for well designed and delivered instruction is fairly rare in my experience.

I should be quick to add that I typically don't fault the instructors for poorly designed material. There are principles and guidelines that guide the creation and delivery of good instruction, but the fields that explore educational theory often have the following characteristics:

• Large/verbose (Typical of any academic field but it does not lend itself well to teachers just trying to teach better. Lets be honest people have a limited amount of time.)
• Rather disorganized (Just consider all the different fields educational research publish in)
• Repetitive (Just consider inquiry based instruction vs question based learning. Yes some theories have a fair amount of similar content making things a bit repetitive at times.)
• Not always obvious what the practical implications are for many theories

Having discussed my pet peave concerning the common misuse of "learning styles" I do want to talk a little bit about my own. I find that the following tends to be a fairly effective approach for me to absorb new material:

1. Listen to the material
2. Read the material
3. Talk about it
4. Repeat steps 1-4 again

I came to realize this pattern seems effective for me as I have spent time reading C.S. Lewis and his books on theology. For example my initial attempts to read The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, and The Four Loves didn't go so well. For whatever reason I just couldn't get into them. Fortunately I decided to listen to the audio books. I listened to them, fell in love with them, and then found the books easy and interesting to read. I have noticed some similar benefits when I listen to my favorite podcast Security Now. Steve goes over some fairly complex security concepts and the act of casually listening allows me digest small but consistent pieces.

So at the end of the day I suppose I do have a learning style. Listening, reading, and talking about things seems to be a pretty effective.

Introduction

I have always been interested in instruction and the best techniques for helping people learn new things. These reasons stem from a variety of experiences I have had in my life. Perhaps these can best be enumerated and explained with brief explanations. 

(1) Missionary Experiences

I served as a proselyting missionary for my church for two years. During that time I spent a good amount of time trying to help people understand the principles of Christianity and how those principles could help them in their lives. I was often frustrated at how ineffectively we taught the material.

As a missionary you hope that people will listen to your message, understand it, and change their lives, and experience greater happiness as result. Several different scenarios often occur. These are ordered in the from most frequently occurring to the least frequency occurring.

1) Don't listen to message
2) Listen to message > Don't understand it > Lose interest because they don't understand
3) Listen to Message > Understand it > Don't believe it and loose interest
4) Listen to Message > Understand it > Choose to change live as result

Often I felt many people got stuck on scenario #2. Though we would "teach" them the lessons they would not really understand them. Not infrequently I felt this failure to comprehend the material stemmed from our poor instructional approach opposed to their inability to understand. Many of these experiences in the mission increased my desire to understand instructional theory, so that I might be a more effective teacher in the future.

(2) College experiences

Other experiences that fueled my desire to understand instructional theory came from various experiences I had in college. After finishing my mission I got a degree in Computer Information Technology from BYU-Idaho. I was fascinated by technology but spent a good deal of time informally evaluating the instructional approaches used by the professors. Though my professors were very skilled in the field of computer technology their instructional approaches were not always particularly effective. I saw too many friends and fellow students getting frustrated because they could not comprehend the material, or at least the way it was taught.

There are additional experiences that have fueled my desire to study and understand instruction. They include seeing the examples of great teachers (C.S. Lewis, Neal A. Maxwell, and others) and the poor and ineffective systems used by many organizations to tree and share and transfer knowledge between workers.