Learning styles

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Information Design—Week 5, Assignment 1

Discuss the three different learning styles that are important to be considered for planning effective instruction. Provide sufficient examples and situations that involve each type of learning style.

There are three ways in which people learn:

  • visual learners learn by seeing;
  • auditory or verbal learners learn by hearing;
  • and kinesthetic or practical learners learn by doing.

It is important to consider these learning styles in the information design process in order to best reach your intended audience.

Visual learning

Pictures, illustrations, graphs, charts, and diagrams will help visual learners to glean information from a project. An example of visual information design can be found at the Google Finance Web site, http://finance.google.com/finance. Users can easily see trends and analyze performance of individual stocks, options, bonds, and entire markets simply by viewing the graphs and charts. These visual aids supplement the raw data and make it easier to digest for the visual learner.

Auditory learning

Auditory learners learn best through hearing information. They are keenly aware of sound around them: a vehicle passing on the street, a child laughing in an upstairs room, crickets in the evening darkness, water dripping from a leaky faucet. Often they cannot concentrate in noisy atmospheres. The auditory learner easily memorizes information when it is put to song; they are inadvertent suckers for advertising jingles. They will often get songs “stuck” in their heads.

A good example of an auditory learning interface is Apple’s iTunes music store. If an auditory learner knows who sings a song, he can browse that artist’s music, listening to song samples until the tune is played that he is looking for.

Kinesthetic learning

Kinesthetic learning is learning by “doing,” physically participating in an activity to learn about a subject matter. An example of this could be when an instructor shows her class how to create a certain effect in Photoshop. The class will need to follow along not only with verbal instructions, but by actually repeating the steps on his or her own terminal.

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