The chart below serves to provide you with valuable information about learning styles and strategies for optimizing learning experiences in an online environment.
| Learning Style | Learner Characteristics | Instructional Strategies |
|---|---|---|
| Active | Active learners tend to learn best by taking information and doing something active with it, such as discussing or applying it, or explaining it to others. Active learners tend to like group work. | Online environments can provide learning opportunities for all types of learners. Active learners can benefit from lab sessions conducted at home and then discussed online. Outside fieldwork can also be incorporated into the coursework, with ample online discussion both preceding and following the experience. Group participation and collaborative activities are accomplished well online. The environment is well suited for presentation and discussion of group or individual projects and activities. Graphical representations of information help learners remember concepts and ideas. Online courses contain graphical information presented in charts, tables, graphs, and images. The online environment is especially appropriate for visual and verbal learners because most of the information for a course is presented in written form. The streaming media in many online courses also enhances the learning experience for visual and verbal learners. In addition to the above-mentioned forms of content presentation, sequential and global learners benefit from tutorials presented online. Tutorials are most often developed in sequential form and can be viewed as often as needed. |
| Reflective | Reflective learners prefer to take information and think about it quietly first. For this reason, they may prefer working alone. | |
| Sensing | Sensing learners tend to like learning facts. They like solving problems by well-established methods. Sensors are more likely than Intuitors to resent being tested on material that has not been explicitly covered in class. | |
| Intuitive | Intuitive learners like innovation. They often prefer discovering possibilities and relationships. Intuitors don’t like course work that involves a lot of memorization and routine calculations. | |
| Visual | Visual learners remember best what they see. Pictures, diagrams, flow charts, time lines, films, and demonstrations all add to the visual learner’s experience. | |
| Verbal | Verbal learners get more out of words--written and spoken explanations. Most people are visual learners, but we all learn more when information is presented both visually and verbally. | |
| Sequential | Sequential learners tend to gain understanding in linear steps, with each step following logically from the previous one. | |
| Global | Global learners tend to learn in large jumps, absorbing material almost randomly without seeing connections, and then suddenly "getting it." |
Information for chart retrieved from http://uncw.edu/cte/soloman_felder.htm and http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/tutorials/id/learningStyles.asp.
