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What type of learner are you? And why it matters!

Nitya Narasimhan, Ph.D on August 08, 2020

Update: Aug 9, 2020 Important: Read This First! I'm at the #WriteTheDocs conference today so just a short note for now and I hope to ...
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pentacular profile image
pentacular

Hasn't this been debunked already?

psychologicalscience.org/news/rele...

I'm not saying that you shouldn't explore various learning strategies, but the idea that you fit in some special learning box seems to be untrue.

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merri profile image
Vesa Piittinen

I guess I'd put this in the same "box" with personality tests. They are a great introductionary tool into knowing how people might be different to you, and maybe get some clues on how to work with different minds. However if you go too much into it and put yourself into a box based on what a test gives as an answer and live by that, then you take the wrong route.

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nitya profile image
Nitya Narasimhan, Ph.D • Edited

Hey all -- thank you so much for raising awareness of this. As you might tell from my initial post, I wrote a tweet and went from that to post within a short spell of time, so this was definitely a spontaneous posting. I should have done more research and I didn't.

And I can't thank you all enough for sharing your comments and providing me more links to educate myself! Deeply appreciate this discussion and hope you all keep sharing.

In the meantime, I added an update to my post above (see "Read This First") to share these resources and hopefully make this a teachable moment for me and others. I do think that there are different ways that people CAN learn (visual, aural, read/write, kinesthetic being ALTERNATIVES or TOOLS that help us) - and where I went wrong was to assume that we each had a default LEARNER style that was individually optimal. The data shows no scientific evidence of this but rather that all of us are multi-modal and capable of using any style necessary.

What makes specific styles successful is likely a combination of context (certain styles better for learning certain things) and practice (my preference for visual makes me use those tools more, which in turn might create learning habits that appear more successful).

My bigger takeaway is this - that learning is about trying things and learning from all our experiences. And learning "in public" has the benefit of being able to leverage community intelligence like this, to course-correct faster. So thank you 😍🙏🏽

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merri profile image
Vesa Piittinen • Edited

You got it a bit wrong. The zero in Aural is not "why", but how much you give it value. It is not the input, it is the output. What you said is the explanation, the input, and that is why Aural is 0. When doing the test you reflect each answer you give to the expected result you will get. And that is why this test and personality tests are such a failure.

For example I get 100% introversion in every personality test I take, because I value it so much more than extroversion, and thus each of my answers I give gets reflected into the result. You could even say I'm purposefully aiming for hitting the 100% introversion score.

I'm not 100% introverted. I just value being introverted. Same for you: you are no incapable of learning by aural means. You just don't value it at all.

EDIT! Seeing the post I replied to got deleted I guess my message might've been a bit too blunt by being so direct. My intent was not to cause shame or other negative feeling, so if it did I'm sorry.

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nitya profile image
Nitya Narasimhan, Ph.D

I agree with the central thesis here - which is that all these "Tests" are in some sense indicative of our own biases and preferences, and not rooted in any scientific or genetic predisposition to be better at one than the other.

Going forward, I am going to think of these as learning strategies and not personalized styles. Each strategy uses a different combination of our senses to provide input and derive insight. And what we get out of each is likely to be proportional to how much we prefer (prioritize) and practice (upskill) our learning journeys using that option

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phantas0s profile image
Matthieu Cneude • Edited

My take on that is: experiment, find what works best for you, stick with it, and don't forget to get back in exploratory mode from time to time.

What you're describing is different way you can learn. Different medium. I would say that the medium you choose for learning doesn't depend on the learner, but what you want to learn.

For example, if you want to learn something very abstract you can't really practice in real life or with a project with concrete goals (mathematics, for example), you need examples, exercises, and test yourself.

If you learn something you can practice easily: have a goal, practice, fail, learn, and go back to practice. When you begin to reach your goals, come back from time to time to the experiment zone to discover new ways and grow.

I wrote about that here if somebody is interested.

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nitya profile image
Nitya Narasimhan, Ph.D

Thank you for sharing - that was an awesome article (and a very detailed one) so props to you for writing it. My favorite section there was on transfer learning:

"Transfer is applying the knowledge from the learning context to another context. For example, it could be applying the programming knowledge your learned at school to the side project you always dreamt to build."

I think that is actually one of the most valuable skills we can learn in technology (and one I constantly try to teach my 11yo) - look for and find reusable patterns that you can take and apply to other problems. From the learning perspective, I think the use of metaphors and analogies is also hugely impactful in helping people go from knowledge (what is it) to understanding (how does it work? how can I use it)

🙏🏽

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phantas0s profile image
Matthieu Cneude • Edited

Glad you liked it!

I totally agree for the use of metaphors and analogies. One needs to be careful not to use the wrong ones (which can confuse the learner), but well used they are powerful tool indeed.

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Andrew Baisden

Subjective determining what type of learner someone is. But what is true in my case anyhow is that certain teachers teaching styles suit me better than others.

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nitya profile image
Nitya Narasimhan, Ph.D

I have to agree - our learning preferences may not always correlate well with learning effectiveness but if they push us to explore and learn more, then any style should be fine. I do think that teaching styles are an area for more research. Teacher effectiveness can be based on topic but the most effective teachers I had tended to use a mixture of styles to engage students and facilitate understanding.