Learning styles and personal development

Continuous personal development to improve your communications and employability skills is very important in terms of making yourself a valuable asset in the workplace. This article discusses how an awareness of learning style can aid personal development and performance within the workplace, training and education. This is something that can be considered in all aspects of your life but we will focus on how understanding different learning styles that best suit yourself and others will maximise efficiency in your workplace.

Different types of learning systems

To better understand how an awareness of learning style can aid personal development you will need to understand different learning systems that people use. This will help identify how you can tailor training plans to meet the needs of individuals. No two people learn in the same way but self-assessment to identify how we learn can really help us. In the following sections, we will look at and compare different learning systems to look at how we learn.

• Active or Reflective: This refers to how learners want to process information. Active learners like to learn by doing. They hit the ground running and get stuck into something quickly taking a hands on approach. Active learners will like practical activities and will not want to take too much time to think about things but rather adopt their own experience to a task. They are not afraid to make mistakes and are more interested in getting on with something and picking things up as they go. Reflective learners are people that like to take their time to think about things and question why something is being done rather than jumping in and doing it. In doing this they use a logical approach to think about how they can improve on a process and make things easier based on experience. Reflective learners do a lot of their learning after they have achieved something as they will look back on what went well and what can be improved in the future.
• Sensing or Intuitive: This relates to how learners take information in. Sensing learners want to make sense of things in real world context. They will want their learning to be supported by hard facts and take a practical look at how what they are studying fits into a real world task. Intuitive learners want to learn the theory behind something and link it to the practical application. Intuitive learners will look for patterns and how things are linked together in order to gain an overall understanding of something.
• Visual or Verbal: This relates to the format of how learners like information to be presented to them. Visual learners like to memorise things in visual format. They are particularly interested in images, graphs and charts to help their learning and will like to make notes in visual format such as annotating diagrams or making their own spider diagrams. They will like the use of colour and will also seek out to learn through video as it appeals to their visual nature. Verbal learners will be more interested in speaking and listening and will make their own detailed notes in order to confirm their own knowledge. Verbal learners are good listeners and will be able to take in a lot of information as well as making concise notes at the same time.
• Sequential or Global: This relates to how learners organise materials used for learning. Sequential learners want to learn things in a step by step manner. Whether it be theory or practical tasks they like to have clear instructions on how something happens over time. They will organise learning materials in a logical manner building their knowledge from simple to more complex concepts. Global learners want lots of information to get a good overall picture of what they are learning and worry about the details later. They seek out lots of information and it does not necessarily matter about the order they get it as they will focus on details later. They will speed read through lots of information to get a good overall understanding and then come back to it later to reinforce the detail, building their knowledge up over time.

Identify preferred learning style

Having explored different learning systems you will know understand how an awareness of learning style can aid personal development in terms of understanding how you learn things. It’s important to know how you process information and take it in, the format that you like it to be presented in and what is the best method of organising learning materials for you.

To identify your own learning style it is important to use different learning style quizzes or assessments so that you know and understand how you learn. Just guessing is not enough and taking test will help identify what works best for you. One example of a learning style assessment is the Vark Test. Vark stands for Visual, Aural, Read/write, and Kinaesthetic and will identify which methods that you use to learn. You will see how the Vark acronym links back to the learning systems that we discussed earlier and you can use the results of a Vark test to further identify your preferred learning style in more detail. Completing a learning style questionnaire such as this and then profiling and understanding how you will go about using these methods is important to get the best out of learning activities for the workplace or when completing external training and tests.

Knowing your own learning style

When you have identified your own learning style you can then use it to access and structure your study and learning in a way that best fits your own needs. In this instance you will really see how an awareness of learning style can aid personal development as you can organise yourself to access materials in a format that you will get the most out of.

As an example, active learners will get the most out of practical tutorials that they can use to guide them through activities. For an active learner that is new to web development they could benefit from using video tutorials if they have also identified that they are visual learners. If the active learner is more of a verbal learner then they might want to access the same training materials in textual format (book or PDF instructions) to help them complete the same tutorials. Reflective learners could also benefit from the same materials but would rather study them in advance before actually starting any practical work. Reflective learners would also benefit from end or chapter tests to test their knowledge as they go. You can see that understanding how you learn is important in terms of selecting the best training materials for your. Exploring alternative options is also a smart move if you are not getting the best out of materials that you are currently using or if you are finding them difficult to understand.

Looking at the example above for active and reflective learning styles you can see how developing and awareness of your own learning style will help you identify different opportunities for training and development that are most suited to you. When you know your own learning style you will be able to choose courses and materials that will help you learn in the best possible way. When you have a clear knowledge of learning systems and the type of learner that you are you will be able to select from a range of resources such as videos, books or even face to face training. Understanding what is best for you will help you choose courses that are either tutor led or learner led based on what you believe will work best for you. You can also choose practical or theoretical based programmes and will be able to identify if exam or project based assessment will work best for you when completing professional qualifications.

Understanding the learning style of others

In addition to understanding your own learning style it is also important to know the learning styles of others so that you can put things into a suitable format for them when explaining something. This is important with direct communication within the workplace and when you are delivering any type of training to other team members.

Teachers, trainers and assessors need to understand the learning style of others so that they can make lessons and training sessions interesting and accessible in a format that suits the person or people attending training. As an example if you have been assigned the task of designing a training course as part of an induction programme for new employees you will need to make sure it meets the needs of a wide audience. If there are 5 visual learners starting next month then providing them with masses of information in text format will not best meet their needs. Similarly, if you have 3 active learners starting the month after giving them loads of audio content on internal processes may bore them. This shows how having an awareness of the learning style of others help them with their own personal development. Understanding how others learn and tailoring professional courses to meet the individual needs of others can really help them. Asking learning to do a learning style questionnaire at the beginning of any course is a good idea so that you are aware of how to give them one to one support in a format that suits them.

In conclusion, you can see how an awareness of learning style can aid personal development for yourself and others in the workplace. It’s important to understand how you learn to make the most of opportunities and it’s also important to understand how others learn so that you can communicate information to them effectively. Understanding others’ learning styles is more important when designing and delivering formal training courses but just having an understanding of this when communicating in any format will make you become a more effective communicator.