Chapter 3: Discovering How You Learn—A Primer for Lifelong Learning
Ideas for Instruction and Instructor Training / Video and CD-ROMs / Media Resources for Instructors / Media Resources for StudentsInstructor’s Manual (IM)
Includes a brief lesson plan for Chapter 3, chapter objectives, lecture launchers, commentary on exercises in the book, and case studies.
Test Bank (in IM)
Multiple Choice, True/False, Short Answer and Essay Questions. Also available in ExamView® electronic format, which can be customized to fit your needs. / 10 Things Every Student Needs to Succeed in College Video
6-minute segment entitled “Knowing Your Own Learning Styles.”
10 Things Every Student Needs to Know to Study Video
6-minute segment entitled “Learning Strategically.”
ExamView® CD-ROM
Computerized version of the Test Bank items for Chapter 3. /
JoinIn™
Hand-held audience response device allows students immediate response to multiple-choice questions, polls, and interactive exercises.Multimedia Manager 2007 CD-ROM
PowerPoint presentations, video clips, images, and web links help with assembly, editing, and presentation of multimedia lectures. / iLrn® Pin-Coded Website
Contains self-assessments, electronic journals that encourage students to reflect on their progress, essay questions and exercises, and Test Your Knowledge interactive quizzes for chapter 3.
InfoTrac® College Edition May be bundled with text.
Keywords: college success, liberal arts, goal setting, values, colleges, universities.
A. Chapter Objectives
1. To introduce students to different approaches for understanding learning styles or preferences
2. To help students optimize their learning styles in any classroom setting
3. To teach students how to develop learning styles other than their own preferred style and to increase the flexibility of the way they study
4. To help students understand and recognize a learning disability
B. Timing of Chapter Coverage
Try and teach this chapter soon after you have taught Chapter 2 on Time Management.
C. About This Chapter
This chapter could show students that developing study skills can be linked to an awareness of how they learn. If they know their strengths, they can develop study skills to help them compensate for their weaknesses. Simply having students read this chapter without doing the exercises will not really help them understand learning styles or broaden their own learning style. Some first-year students believe a mystery surrounds the success of some students and the failure of others - that there’s a kind of magic that successful students have. You know this isn’t true. By teaching study skills in general and addressing learning styles, you can help
· provide a series of methods that will encourage them to be a more deliberate and organized student.
· facilitate the students’ self-development.
Deliberateness
If your students know that classes are not simply chaotic, they should be able to approach learning somewhat more deliberately than they might have without this knowledge. Teaching learning styles is another way you can reinforce one of the basic premises of Your College Experience- that college success depends largely on careful planning.
Self-Development
The section on learning styles and personality types suggests that as first-year students develop, they will need to expand their learning styles. This is just another way of adding to their “bag of tricks.” As a writing instructor used to tell her students in response to their complaints that she was trying to destroy their writing styles, “I’m not trying to destroy your styles at all; I’m trying to help you develop a variety of styles.”
D. Suggested Outline for Discussing Chapter 3
Expanded Lesson Plan
STEP I: Lecture Launchers and Icebreakers
· Use these instructions to present an exercise that focuses on the different ways people
acquire information. Follow the script and directions with the class:
“I am going to ask you as a class to all do one action and then freeze. Are you ready? Do this and then freeze. Look at your fingernails. Leave your hands frozen and look up at me. Now use one of your hands to raise your hand to respond to one of these questions. How many held out your hands, palm down, fingers pointed away, looking at your nails and the back of your hand?” (Draw on the board a rough figure of a hand and fingers extended. Draw in the nails.)
“Raise your hand if you did this.” (Demonstrate.) Count the number and write it on the board by the figure. “Thank you. Hands down.”
“Now, how many curled your fingers back over your palm and looked at your nails?” (Draw this figure.) “Raise your hand if you did this.” (Demonstrate.) Count this number and write it on the board. “Thank you. Hands down.”
“Finally, how many of you just looked at your fingernails without moving your hands at all?” Count again and write this number on the board. “Okay, unfreeze.”
“Here I am your instructor. I asked my class to do a simple task, and I got different responses. What suggestions can you give me?” From here, the discussion can follow in many directions such as how we all differ, how you might differ from your instructor, and different personality types. A student may ask, “What is the right answer?” This opens up discussion that many questions in college classes may not have only one answer. You can explain to the students that faculty may be more interested in how a student arrived at the answer, no matter what it is.
Exercise written by C. B. Red Bright, Jackson State Community College, Jackson, TN
· Ask students to jot down on a scrap of paper their answer to this question: “A meeting scheduled for 10:30 has been moved up 30 minutes. What time does the meeting start?” Pause for a moment and then repeat, “Moved up 30 minutes. What time does the meeting start?” Count the answers for both 10:00 and 11:00. Again, discuss the differences with your students. Have both “sides” defend their answers. Tell them it all hinges on the word “up” in time. Encourage students to analyze why “up” in time means that to them. Don’t accept, “That’s just want it means.” Emphasize importance of vocabulary and of asking teachers for clarification when necessary.
STEP II: Classroom Activities
a. Use the PowerPoint presentations in Multimedia Manager 2007 to complement your mini
lecture.
b. Key Lesson Themes
· Give a short explanation of the Experimental Learning Model. Allow students to discuss and share some thoughts on this model.
· Develop a lesson on the Myers Briggs Types. Explain the meaning of the letters.
· One way to introduce the use of senses in the learning process is to get your
students thinking about their own sensory preferences. You can access the site for VARK online. The free, printable learning style inventory consists of 13 questions and can be downloaded from http://www.vark-learn.com/english/index.asp and distributed to your students. It measures a person’s preference for four kinds of learning: Visual, Auditory, “Read/Write,” and Kinesthetic.
c. Group Activities
· To participate in this exercise, your students should have already completed the MBTI and know the four letters of their learning style; for example, INTP, INFJ. At the beginning of the exercise, ask students to write their four-letter type on an index card that you provide and tape it to their shirts. Group students into pairs representing opposites: S/I (sensing/intuition) types together and T/F (thought/feeling) types together. Present an out-of-class assignment to be completed for the next class period. This assignment should involve information gathering rather than personal experience; for example, a short analysis of the current struggles in Iraq. When the students come to the next class, they should be prepared to participate in a discussion of the answers to the assigned questions. You need to be prepared to keep the discussion focused on learning styles.
d. Peer Leader Assistance
· The following tasks will help students analyze and adjust to the different teaching styles of their instructors, to develop learning styles other than their own preferred style (i.e. less dominant learning style), and to increase the flexibility of the way they study:
o Generate a discussion on one’s preferred learning style and offer strategies on how students could adapt to a professor whose teaching style does not match their (the students’) learning styles.
o Make a list of the preferred learning style of each student. Keep for further classroom assignments.
e. Case Studies
Keisha
Keisha is a first-year student taking 15 credits. She has found out that there is a lot of work required for each class. She also sees that instructors seem to have a different way of teaching their class and emphasizing the material. Keisha seems to be having the most trouble with her Philosophy class and is finding the lecture hard to follow. She got a D on the first test and is worried because she was a good student in high school. The professor discusses many aspects of the different philosophers’ theories during the lecture. Keisha is having difficulty tying them together and is more in tune with the names of key figures, dates, and major points. Her next test is in two weeks.
Discussion Questions:
1. Why is Keisha having this difficulty?
2. What can she do to improve her situation?
3. What can Keisha do to better understand each lecture?
4. How can Keisha best prepare for her next exam?
Howie
Howie’s lab partner, Kai, has a particular way of completing each assignment. She is thorough and methodical, and seems to have an immediate grasp of all new material they are learning in class. Howie, however, needs more time to digest the concepts they’re studying. Kai becomes very critical and impatient with Howie whenever he asks her a question. Clearly, Kai prefers working by herself than with another person. As a result, Kai often completes the assignments with little input from Howie. Howie feels that Kai’s interference keeps him from fully learning the material covered by each lab assignment. His mother has suggested he speak to his professor about this problem, but Howie doesn’t want to sound like a complainer.
Discussion Questions:
1. What psychological types would you assess to both Howie and Kai?
2. How could Howie work with his learning style to improve his relationship with Kai?
3. If you were Howie, what would you do: go to your professor or work things out with Kai on your own?
f. Chapter Exercises
· Exercise 3.1: Learning Styles Models
This is yet another exercise that promotes good classroom discussion.
· Exercise 3.2: Learning About Learning Disabilities
This exercise should be done at home. Again, this would be a good exercise for class discussion after they have completed work in groups.
STEP III: Review and Preview
REVIEW
a. Address Common Questions and Concerns of First-Year Students:
· How can you put people in these little boxes?
Answer: Students should be encouraged to understand psychological types. Have them try the self-assessment on page 34 to see where they stand.
· I’m eighteen years old. How can I change my learning style now?
Answer: Encourage students to work on their strengths while exploring other learning styles.
· Is one learning style better than another?
Answer: The book does not try to privilege any one style over the other. However, students should be aware of the preferred learning styles for acquiring information to be a doctor, lawyer, or teacher.
· Why do I really need to develop a wider range of learning styles?
Answer: In order for college to work, students will need a great variety of skills. Really emphasize the importance of sensing, analytical, auditory, and other learning styles.
· Will my learning style really be relevant to anything after I graduate from college?
Answer: Stress to your students that they are developing life-long skills.
· What difference do learning styles make in job situations?
Answer: Just as groups can be enhanced with people who have different learning styles,
so can the work place.
b. Writing Reflection
· Choose one or more of the reflection questions on page 53 in the text and ask students
to respond in writing.
PREVIEW FOR NEXT CLASS
You might want to give your students Exercise 4.3 as an outside class assignment to prepare them for the next class topic. Or, you might want to consider asking students to do a search on the topic of active learning, using library and Internet resources. Ask each student to bring in just one benefit of active learning from such a search.
E. Test Questions
Multiple Choice - choose ONE answer per question.
1. There is/are ____ learning style models.
a. only one
b. two
c. five
d. numerous
2. The four-stage cycle of learning (concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and concrete experience abstract conceptualization) characterizes which learning style inventory?
a. Kolb.
b. Vark.
c. Myers-Briggs.
d. none of the above
3. If you are an assimilator you
a. acquire information.
b. like to think about abstract concepts.
c. make decisions.
d. none of the above
4. If you are a converger you
a. acquire information.
b. like think about abstract concepts.
c. prefer hands-on learning.
d. none of the above
5. Your learning style reflects
a. your intelligence.
b. how hard you study.
c. the way you acquire knowledge.
d. none of the above
6. Field independent learners tend to
a. be highly autonomous.
b. require a lot of interaction.
c. choose areas of study like the humanities.
d. none of the above
7. According to Kolb, effective learners need ______different kinds of abilities.
a. five
b. six
c. seven
d. none of the above
8. Dr. Howard Gardner’s 1983 theory of multiple intelligences is controversial mainly because
a. it is not based on research.
b. it calls into question traditional definitions of intelligence.
c. it is comprised of more than five components.
d. it classifies people by their actions.
True/False
9. According to the Kolb Inventory of Learning Styles, if you are an accommodator, you like the world of ideas and theories.