Leverage Your Learning Style

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Putting Your Learning Style To Work

Learning style resources:

http://www.howtolearn.com/personal.html
An online self-test to identify your dominant learning preferences.

http://www.campaign-for-learning.org.uk/aboutcfl/whatkind.htm
This framework classifies learners as activists, reflectors, pragmatists, or theorists. This site includes an assessment to determine which category best describes you, and tips on strengthening your less-used learning styles.

http://www.pz.harvard.edu/sumit/MISUMIT.HTM
Explains the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which identifies eight different independent mental abilities (intelligences): language; musical; logical-mathematical; spatial; bodily-kinesthetic; interpersonal; intrapersonal; and naturalist, which each person possesses in unique combination.

It's important to remember that there is no "best" learning style. While visual learners may have more options to choose from than their tactile/kinesthetic counterparts, none of these learning preferences have been identified as superior to the others. And while almost everyone has a dominant learning style, most people are quite capable of taking in information through other methods - just less efficiently. Make learning environments that complement your learning style your first choice, but if you are stuck in an environment that doesn't do so, simply recognize this and supplement with techniques that will cater to your strengths.

You can also use your new understanding of learning styles in another way - to increase your retention and recall of information by combining learning methods. If you actively study material using tools that appeal to more than one perception method, you will increase your understanding and recall abilities. For example, read about something(auditory/visual), then reinforce that learning with hands-on practice (tactile/kinesthetic). This provides your brain with more than one way to recall the same information.

The visual/auditory/kinesthetic model is only one of several ways of assessing your personal learning process. While this model focuses on physical processing of information, others explore how personality traits or particular areas of intelligence affect learning. If you don't feel you fit well into one of the categories we discussed here, you might benefit from delving a bit further into this topic using the resources listed in the sidebar. You may find that simply adjusting your choice of learning tools will make absorbing new material and cramming for those certification exams a simpler and more pleasurable task.

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