Learning Styles In Business

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What Types of Learning StylesAre Best for Business?

What are "learning styles"? The topic of learning styles has been discussed throughout the academic world for several years, but do we really understand how it affects the way students learn? From public school to higher education, different learning styles can be found everywhere. The three main types of learning styles are visual, auditory, and tactile/kinesthetic (hands on) . Each style reflects the main ability of how the individual learns best. Visual learners need to see the speaker and watch facial expressions in order to comprehend the material. They learn best from visual displays and often prefer to take detailed notes during lectures. According to researchers , visual learning improves student performance in critical thinking, retention, comprehension, and organization.

Auditory Learning is a style of learning in which a person learns most effectively by listening to information. They learn best through verbal lectures and verbal discussions. It is very hard for this type of learner to comprehend written information. Tactile/Kinesthetic learners are hands-on people. They must actively be involved in the process by physically touching or moving the work. Without movement of some sort they become easily distracted and may struggle to maintain attention.

As to teaching styles, many professors lecture during the first part of class and have interactive discussion during the latter part. This is an example of an audio/visual teaching style. Another common method of teaching is to provide the students with a given set of instructions and allow the students to work on their own. In this method, the students have little assistance but are able to work...

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...on would have been if we had a different pool rather than the sample pool that we used for this experiment. If we had more time, we could compare these results with pooling other business classes to determine, if there would be any change. We would also want to consider making the video pool larger to compliment the size of the paper handout pool.

The training video can be found at:

http://arapaho.nsuok.edu/~rosener/learningStyles/chart/chart.html

The full hands-on Word document can be found at:

http://arapaho.nsuok.edu/%7Erosener/learningStyles/visual-instructions.doc

References:

1 Learning styles- http://www.ldpride.net/learningstyles.MI.htm#Learning%20Styles%20Explained

2 Graphic Organizers: A Review of Scientifically Based Research, The Institute for the Advancement of Research in Education http://www.inspiration.com/vlearning/research/index.cfm

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