One of my team's mascots... I think it fits well in any discussion of learning styles.
First, it’s kind of intimidating to write about something that a lot of other really smart people are writing about — on the same day, even — and even more so because many great things have been published about learning styles recently that I couldn’t hope to touch in terms of thoroughness.
So I’m just going to share an experience from a workshop I gave recently to my local ASTD chapter, which largely covered choosing training/performance support modalities for different situations. I didn’t bring up learning styles, but when participants mentioned it — several times — I shared with them my opinions, which are that it’s entirely unfounded (okay, that part is far from just my opinion) pseudo-science that is being used to guide a lot of bad design and sell a lot of so-so authoring tools, and that humans are such overwhelmingly visual creatures that if we simply catered better to that one sense, we could improve the vast majority of our designs.
One of the participants countered that learners certainly had different preferences, though… for example, some generally want a full multimedia experience and some prefer to just read a help file and get back to their jobs, and didn’t that verify that there was something to the learning styles theories?
Well… no. I have observed the same phenomenon among learners, but my takeaway is that this is a preference for different kinds of interaction, and furthermore, that it can change with context. A learner may prefer a full course or immersive experience in most cases, but have different needs at different times. Consider these scenarios:
- If it’s on a topic that the learner is already well versed in, he may just want to start by testing himself to find the gaps in his knowledge, so that he can skip the parts that would just bore him.
- If the learner is new to the topic and interested in it, but is in the middle of a time-sensitive situation, he may prefer just skimming a help file to handle the situation at hand and come back for an A-to-Z course later.
The question is, if these learning preferences (based on type of interactivity) do exist, how to accommodate them… and especially when they could change not only from person to person, but from context to context? The best way I’ve found is to incorporate at least the spirit of Thiagi’s 4 Door Model… essentially, designing for different interactivity needs/preferences and allowing the learner to choose their own experiences. This seemed like a really labor-intensive process the first time I thought about it, but I’ve found that the most difficult thing about it is creating an interface that allows the learner to immediately understand that they’re being given options and what those options are (at least, if all interaction types are being presented in the same place). It seems to be wildly beyond learner expectations.
What do you think? Have you designed for interaction preferences? What were your results?
