If you had time to evaluate the research on learning styles, what would you conclude?
Here’s what four cognitive psychologists concluded: “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing. If classification of students’ learning styles has practical utility, it remains to be demonstrated.”
That quote is from Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence, an examination of learning style research. Some more quotes from the paper:
- Studies are weak: “Although the literature on learning styles is enormous, very few studies have even used an experimental methodology capable of testing the validity of learning styles applied to education. Moreover, of those that did use an appropriate method, several found results that flatly contradict the popular meshing hypothesis.” “Meshing” refers to changing your teaching style to match a learning style. (p. 105)
That’s what narrated material does. The pace of the narration controls the pace of the material. When you’re learning from narrated material, you can’t easily skim stuff you already know, or slow down and concentrate on the challenging parts, because the voice continues relentlessly at a pace that someone else established.
For example, more courses than I ever want to see use sterile images of bland business people because the courses are about business, and “everyone knows” that business involves people in suits talking at meetings or shaking hands. That’s the functional mindset, and it has spawned thousands of lifeless photos.
Want to develop your ability to show abstract ideas? Find inspiration at these unusual sites.
