T&L 466 Learning Styles Assessment Project

For this assignment, I chose to take the Learning Styles Assessment test at the NC State University website. The test measured your results in four categories, each representing two "opposite" learning styles: Active or Reflective; Sensing or Intuitive; Visual or Verbal; and Sequential and Global. My results for each of these categories was as follows:

  ACT                  X                                REF

       11  9   7   5   3   1   1   3   5   7   9   11

                          <-- -->

  SEN                                      X            INT

       11  9   7   5   3   1   1   3   5   7   9   11

                          <-- -->

  VIS                                      X            VRB

       11  9   7   5   3   1   1   3   5   7   9   11

                          <-- -->

  SEQ                  X                                GLO

       11  9   7   5   3   1   1   3   5   7   9   11

From these results, we can infer that I am: slightly more Active than Reflective (1-3 is considered a "normal" range); more strongly Intuitive than Sensing; far more Verbal than Visual; and slightly more Sequential than Global.

To me, these results make a lot of sense: I've always had a hard time forcing myself to read textbooks (although I excel at reading when it's recreational), and consistently get more out of in-class discussions and lectures than I do assigned readings. I also tend to rely more on my own instincts when it comes to situations where I don't have all of the facts, so my being more strongly intuitive does not surprise me.

If I were faced with a class with similar learning styles to my own, I would very likely rely almost exclusively on in-class discussion and lecture to disseminate information, and try to give students a better sense of the philosophies and reasoning behind what I am teaching them. However, since it is far more likely that I will have a more even spread across these styles, I would be more likely to create my lesson plans in a way that would engage the greatest number of styles at the same time: ideally, we would have hand-outs about all of our discussions, have plenty of time for working through problems as a group and individually, and have an even balance of facts and worldviews.