Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Learning Styles

I am a grading assistant for an undergraduate class that is wholly online. A lot of online courses like this one have assignments that exist purely to prove to the teacher that the students have done the reading or watched the video or what have you. For the assignment that I'm grading today, students were required to write their opinions about one website (containing an article) as well as about two videos. They were instructed to include their thoughts about the website/videos, what they thought about the topic, and which one of the three best fit their learning style. As far as actual assignments go, this one is obviously very easy to complete, as long as you read the article and watch the videos. (Amazingly, there are students who didn't bother doing the assignment. SMH.)

The article in question can be found here, and the two videos are posted below. What I have found the most interesting is that among the students (and there are a little over 100), I'd say they are divided into equal numbers over which of the three items best fits their learning style - and they are very opinionated about which one(s) they like and which one(s) they don't like and why. Even though the goal of this assignment wasn't to make this point, it clearly shows that students have different learning styles, and that even if you prefer one style, you should include other styles in your classroom. (I personally prefer the article, although I enjoyed the first video. What about you?)


1 comment:

John from Daejeon said...

The website was bland and unremarkable, the first video was really too short to be an accurate gauge of whether or not I could actually learn from it (the German accent also hindered it on my first viewing), but the second video did provide much better insight into the topic even if it was a bit boring and slow at first.

Once I cut out the distracting ESL header and advertisement, the article suited my learning style the best, but most of that has to do with the ease of the forward and reverse features of my eyes and brain in taking the whole in and understanding it better than having to try and do the same with two very different videos that now require my eyes, ears, and brain to do the job in which I was able to do with just two previously and with much greater focus.