Transcript Learning Styles & Teaching Strategies Applications in Library & Information Literacy Instruction Michael P. Sauers, MLS Memorial Library, SUNY Cortland 10 January 2005

Learning Styles &
Teaching Strategies
Applications in Library &
Information Literacy
Instruction
Michael P. Sauers, MLS
Memorial Library, SUNY Cortland
10 January 2005
Learning styles
• What are the different learning
styles?
– Auditory
– Visual
– Kinesthetic & Tactile
http://www.chaminade.org/inspire/learnstl.htm
Auditory learners…
• Sound out word
• Enjoy listening but are impatient to
talk
• Forget faces but remember names
• Easily distracted by noises
• Prefer the phone
• Call the help desk
Visual learners…
• Try to see words
• Prefer not to talk but don’t like to
listen for too long
• Forget names but remember faces
• Easily distracted by movement
• Prefer face-to-face
• Seek out pictures and/or diagrams
Kinesthetic/Tactile learners…
• Write words down
• Use gestures and expressive
movements
• Easily distracted by activity in the
immediate area
• Remember what you did with another
person
• Prefer to talk while doing an activity
• Will jump in and try something
• Keep trying over and over changing
variables each time
Teaching Styles
• Concepts to consider
• Available teaching styles
• Which work the best?
Learner Confidence
“…people are, in general,
overconfident. They overestimate
their ability, and their level of
knowledge, and their decisionmaking prowess. And people are
more overconfident when facing
difficult problems than when facing
easy ones.”
─ James Surowiecki,
The Wisdom of Crowds
Learner Confidence Cont’d
• It has been my experience that
when it comes to computers there
is a generational difference in the
level of confidence.
• Those that did not grow up with
computers tend to under estimate
their skills as opposed to those that
grew up with computers.
Pareto’s Rule
• “Pareto's rule states that a small
number of causes is responsible for
a large percentage of the effect, in
a ratio of about 20:80.”
www.public.asu.edu/~dmuthua/pareto's_principle.html
• As applied to computers and library
resources, 80% of users take
advantage only 20% of available
features/resources.
Applying Pareto’s Principle
• An instructor needs to figure our
what 20% is being used by the 80%
and focus on imparting that
information.
• This does not mean that the
instructor should focus on that 20%
to the exclusion of the other 80%.
Experiential Learning
• David Kolb, Case Western Reserve
University
• “Ideas are not fixed but are formed and
reformed through experience.”
• Bibliographic instruction must give the
students the experience they need but
also give them the ability to renew that
experience.
• This can be done by focusing on process
rather than outcomes.
Bodi, Sonia. “Teaching Effectiveness and Bibliographic Instruction: The Relevance of
Learning Styles”. College & Research Libraries, March 1990.
Auditory
• Lecture
• Discussion
• Works best for larger non-concrete
concepts, theories, items where
there is no right or wrong answer.
Visual
• Demonstration
• Works best for simpler tasks with
not a lot of steps.
• Also works for more complicated
procedures providing they’re broken
down into smaller sets of steps.
Kinesthetic & Tactile
• Hands on
• Works best when dealing with
technology.
Which works best?
• Unless you happen to have a group
of students that all have the same
learning style and you’re teaching a
topic that lends itself best to a
single teaching style you need to
find the right balance of all three in
order to accommodate all of the
students.