What are Learning Styles? And How to Use Learning Styles for Engaging Training Material
Keeping your staff trained and educated is key to making them (and your business) successful. This is why it can be concerning to learn that nearly half of your employees likely aren't being reached by your current teaching style.?
To correct this, you're going to need to embrace different learning styles. In this post, we'll be covering everything you need to know about each learning style, from what they are to how you can define them in your workplace.?
Contents
What is a learning style?
Why are learning styles important?
5 different learning styles explained
How to define your learning style
How to engage learners with a style that suits them using My Learning Hub
What is a learning style?
First things first, let's cover what a learning style is. The theory of learning styles is that each person has their own ideal way of receiving new information. While one person may benefit from having an instructor explain things to them, someone else may benefit more from reading in a book, while another person still will benefit more from a hands-on explanation.?
Not only is there a lot of science to support this theory (as well as some prevailing counter-theories), but it makes sense intuitively as well. Many of us can probably relate to listening to someone explain something and "not getting it", growing bored, or otherwise feeling disengaged with the material.?
At their core, learning styles are about engaging learners with educational material.?
Why are learning styles important?
Let's dive deeper into why learning styles matter. Below are two key points behind the importance of investing in learning styles at your workplace.?
Increase your teaching effectiveness
If you're a manager, trainer, or have anything to do with keeping a team educated and effective, then you know the importance of constantly improving your teaching strategy. It keeps things fresh and ensures that you aren't leaving team members behind.?
That's what learning styles are all about. By using different models of learning, you can be more sure that you're engaging with each of your employees on their terms.?
Using different learning styles also has the benefit of reinforcing what you're teaching. Even if a person perfectly understands what you're covering with a standard instructional session, getting more hands-on or visual will help them engage with the topic from a different angle, strengthening their understanding.?
Take care of the other half of your learners
As mentioned, around 45% of your learners are going to learn better from something other than an instructor repeating information to them. That's not to say that you should abandon having an instructor or written training material altogether, but instead to point out that a significant number of your team will need some reinforcement.?
Since a trainer’s goal is to get as much information across as effectively as possible, the importance of different learning styles should be quickly clear. You probably aren't reaching everyone.?
Fortunately, that's easy to change after learning about the various models of learning.?
5 different learning styles explained
Now that you have an idea of why learning styles are important, let's cover specific examples of learning styles.
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Auditory
The first style to consider when conducting an assessment for learning styles is also the most common in workplace training and development: auditory learning. This refers to individuals who learn best through auditory instruction and, most often, will materialise in a typical instructor/audience dynamic.?
The auditory learning style is ingrained in our educational toolkit thanks to being the most efficient. It's easiest and most familiar to stand in front of a group and start speaking, and it allows you to easily reach a large number of students.?
Accommodating?
Next is the accommodating style. This is the intuitive, hands-on approach to learning. Rather than diving into the logic of why something is the way it is, you speak on it in a way that "just makes sense" to the people listening.?
For example, we could go into the neuroscience and theory behind learning styles to explain it to you. Or, we could explain it intuitively and familiarly, using contexts you can relate to (which we've chosen to do). The same goes for teaching people most things, though of course, there are certain subjects where a technical, logical explanation can't be avoided.?
Visual
Visual learners are those who learn best by seeing the explanation behind a concept. It's important to note that this is different from reading, which we'll cover next.?
Instead, visual learning refers to seeing a concept in action. You could verbally tell someone how to drive a car, or you could let them watch you do it. A visual learner will quickly identify what each control is used for.?
Reading and writing
Then there's reading and writing. This is for learners who learn best by, well, reading and writing what they’re learning! For some people, reading about a concept (rather than listening to someone explain it) is the best way to internalise and digest what they're being taught.?
As for writing about a concept, this forces someone to engage with the material from a unique angle. It pushes them to explain it in new terms that they understand, helping to concretise the concept.?
Kinesthetic
The last style to consider when conducting an assessment for learning styles is kinesthetic. This is the learning style that revolves around tactile engagement — or pure hands-on learning. Kinesthetic learners learn best by getting in the driver's seat themselves and seeing what it's all about.?
Trial and error is a big part of what makes kinesthetic learning "work". It's repetitive, provides instant feedback, and is engaging on multiple levels.?
The best Learning and Development programs tap into a little of each learning style, leaving no learner behind! In-person sessions should be designed to incorporate practical tasks, solo reading and writing, presentation tasks and group discussions.?
Printed or digital material should also be as interactive as possible, to keep kinesthetic, auditory and visual learners engaged.
How to define your learning style
You can define your own learning styles as well as those of others by finding a trusted test online. Many people have more than one learning style, so don't expect to have one learning style be your sole strength (a.k.a., unimodal).?
The key to using learning styles to improve your teaching is to engage with multiple styles during each educational session. This will help you reach the most people and reinforce what you're teaching.?
How to engage learners with a style that suits them using My Learning Hub
Now that you know most of what there is to know about the different learning, you're ready to start incorporating it into your instructional material. And a great tool for helping you do that is My Learning Hub — educational software designed to make your Learning and Development as effective as possible.?
Our course builder is easy to use with drag-and-drop design assets, helping trainers create multi-style L&D material quickly for different learning preferences. Add the ‘Audio Answer’ or ‘Voice Recording’ feature to allow learners to respond as if they were in a real-life situation!
As an admin, you can listen to the recording, mark it as correct/incorrect and give feedback. Now you can run your virtual training programs with no compromise on learning preferences — simply create your content, assign it and see the results.