Two questions on the survey targeted the issue of learning styles. I was trying to get a sense of where students situated themselves in relationship to this style of presentation of information.
I prefer traditional lecture as a source of contextual information.
This question got the most uniformly diverse response of any of the questions. For the larger class, results were exactly symmetrical – 1 person strongly agreed, 1 strongly disagreed, 3 people agreed, 3 people disagreed, and 6 people checked “neutral”. For the literature class, there was one response per category for all but “strongly agree”.
I find it interesting that the same person who indicated that they strongly preferred traditional lecture also provided the most negative responses in other areas. (see my response to their comment here.)
I consider myself a visual or kinesthetic learner.
This was surprising. According to the VARK project, approximately one third of the population has a visual or kinesthetic learning preference. However, in response to this survey, two-thirds (9) of the cinema students either agreed or strongly agreed with this statement. 4 students were neutral, one student disgreed. For the literature class, 3 of the 4 students strongly agreed with this statement (the 4th student checked “neutral”.) So, the number of students in these classes who consider themselves to be visual or kinesthetic learners was twice as high as what the VARK would have predicted.
However, contrary to my normal practice, I did not ask students this semester to take the VARK survey at the beginning. Over a third of the students have worked with this survey with me in the past; others may have encountered it with other professors. But there was no systematic approach to diagnosing or defining student learning styles at the beginning of the semester, other than my own overtly expressed attempts to cater to all learning styles in my teaching. At the same time, the subject matter itself may have biaised the sample towards visual learners – a course on cinema – and all four of the literature students have worked with me before.
From our grant proposal:
Current research into learning styles indicates that students with a preference for visual and/or kinesthetic modes of information presentation make up approximately one third of the population. These students are typically disadvantaged in higher education compared to students with a strong textual preference, or students with strong aural abilities – the two modes of information presentation that dominate in the traditional classroom. Visual and kinesthetic learners, however, will struggle in this environment. The timeline module will improve the learning experience for these students by providing them with the information they need in the format that they understand and retain the most quickly and easily. It will also enable professors who do not normally (because of their own learning styles) present in a kinesthetic or visual format to better support these students.
An important next step for testing in the Fall would be to diagnose learning styles at the beginning of the course, before the assignment itself has influenced their perception.
