Learning Styles and applications in e-learning
So, I was going through my RSS feeds and I noticed that Suemin had updated! So I read, and then I thought! (shock horror!!! ^_^) I read Suemin’s last two posts, one describing learning styles and the other concerning the impact of learning styles on learning strategies, and had a few thoughts on what implications this has for e-learning.
My first thought while reading the entries was that the main problem for an educator is that when teaching a class there are so many variations of preferences that it is difficult to cater to them all, meaning that learning techniques used will not be effective for everyone in the class. While this thought was based on traditional face-to-face education, I think it still has implications for e-learning.
While an activist needs to do something to learn it and e-learning can be experiential, e-learning is restricted to an image on a computer screen. If the learner is an activist according to Honey and Mumford’s tests, but also a kinaesthetic learner according to VARK tests, a computer screen may not be active enough a medium – you can’t touch or feel or really be in a situation if it is presentedin a 2-D frame.
And while the activity of blogging involves observing, reflecting and thinking – and is therefore suited to reflectors and theorists – it is not suited to activists, and is only suited to pragmatists if they can link the reflection to a real life situation.
So, then, the same problem appears. If activities in e-learning are only appropriate for certain learners, and a class of learners is compromised of a variety of different learners, then the amount of activities that will need to be conducted to appease each learner group is enormous. However, a balance must be achieved between addressing the learners’ needs and time and workload constraints. A teacher cannot have too many activities teaching the same lesson, just in a different way. The educator would spend too much time creating the experiences and the learners would spend too much time going through each activity. This is not a viable option.
The question with learning styles (in e-learning and traditional learning) is how to address the needs of a variety of learners while maintaining the integrity of the structure of the learniong and learning techniques.
