26 May 1997 Empowering the learners – Lincoln matches teaching methods to learning styles

It doesn't take a psychologist or educationalist to tell you that people learn in different ways. We all know it from our own life experiences and if you have children you'll know it from simple observation. Some are bookishly studious about their homework, others love to talk and debate it.

It does however take psychologists and educationalists to get a recognition of different learning styles built into the teaching techniques of schools and universities.

At Lincoln University, New Zealand's smallest university – just 4000 students – the spirit of progress and innovation is not stifled by institutional size and weight. It is possible to make real advances in translating theory into practice and the issue of learning styles is an example.

Educationalist Neil Fleming, Director of Lincoln University's Education Centre and Communication Lecturer Colleen Mills have won world recognition for their work with lecturing staff and students on matching teaching methods to learning styles.

It's a programme and approach that has been progressively developing at Lincoln since the end of the 1980s and there are now many Lincoln graduates out in the workforce who owe their academic success to an early identification of their optimum learning style and a subsequent tailoring of personal study techniques to make best use of this knowledge.

Neil says it is a piece of self-awareness and a set of associated techniques which these graduates can carry through life and put to use in all learning situations.

The Lincoln University programme uses the acronym VARK (Visual, Aural, Reading/Writing, Kinaesthetic) and it starts by acknowledging four fundamental preferences that students have for taking in (and giving out) information. A simple questionnaire is at the heart of the methodology and it is work which has attracted international attention to the point of being incorporated in a number of new psychology texts.

"To focus the students on the way they address incoming information and to identify their naturally preferred style of learning we give them a simple questionnaire," says Neil. "We stress its simplicity because a large and complex diagnostic approach would probably be a turn-off.

"The profiles identified by the questionnaire are then discussed individually with the students and 'help sheets' are given to them on how best to utilise their identified preferences. Possible modifications to study practices are discussed and the students subsequently report back on their progress."

Neil says that the students, armed with insights about their own preferred learning styles, are quick to revise their learning behaviour.

While the students ‘empower’ themselves through the questionnaire and subsequent discussion sessions, what impact has the work had on the teaching and lecturing part of the educational process?

"It's all good news," says Neil. "Previously our exhortations to present course content in a range of ways to appeal to the different 'sensory modes' of student learning had little impact. But now, since administering the questionnaire to students and sharing with staff the results gathered, there has been an increased awareness of, and interest in, varying the teaching approaches to accommodate the identified diversity.

"What was once an unconscious strategy of the effective teacher has become a deliberate strategy.

"One professor, for example, is now teaching with kinaesthetic and visual examples of his economic theory where previously this tended to be taught only in a read/write sort of way. Another is adding various diagrammatic examples to the typical kinaesthetic experiences in laboratory learning."

As word has spread about the Lincoln work and use of the VARK questionnaire, Neil has received a stream of enquiries from institutions and individuals all over the world. For example, on the very day this piece was written, an academic at the University of Wisconsin e-mailed to say he had now administered the first VARK trial to his class and that colleagues in his department had "snatched up copies of the questionnaire for their own classes".

Summing up the work, Neil says that by recognising the diverse range of learning differences in their students and accommodating them, teachers at all levels can experience improved academic results and enhanced levels of communication with their students.

Ian Collins, Journalist, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand