a)     ascertain whether someone is predominantly either a Pragmatist, Reflector, Activist or a Theorist;

b)     use this information to develop techniques that encourage the development of a well-reounded learner.

This would seem a more sensible system of using categorisation of learning styles than many others, as it appeals to what we already know of people’s character traits, and it crucially attempts to encourage development in areas of weakness. So the ideal learner according to the LSQ would be a Pragmatic Theorist who likes to Reflect while being Active. And the ideal manager would identify all these aspects within their team.

With the Growth of eLearning, Does it Become Easier to Teach for Learner Styles?

While researching this topic – in the early 1990s – I set up a series of sessions which aimed at providing tuition for all of these traits: the Activist activity engaged in learning through competitive brainstorming and role-playing within a group; the Reflectors’ task involved individual puzzles with no time limit; Theorists’ tasks included planning, analysing and correcting others’ work; and the Pragmatists’ activity was rooted in the real world by using mimes and role-play.

Fast forward twenty years and the opportunity for appealing to the styles within the LSQ is still there:

• Activists’ tasks can still be set against a timer or against another ‘competitor’;
• Reflectors’ activities of puzzling without time constraints are even more feasible;
• Theorists can plan, analyse and correct to their heart’s content;
• and Pragmatists can be set up in virtual environments to practice as they learn much more easily nowadays.

The big question is – is it all worth it? Are the 80 questions in the LSQ an effective way of diagnosing a learning personality?  The idea of setting up tasks focussing on a range of differing learner styles is appealing, but would it be worth it, given that the very nature of the LSQ makes it difficult to prove? In my experience, no-one was a pure Activist, Reflector, Theorist or Pragmatist, so I would conclude that effective learning materials would cater equally for ALL styles.

Which brings us back to the one indispensable aspect of all learning: the guide. As long as a good tutor is available to see any weaknesses in learning styles, the student can be led toward online materials that bolster these weaknesses and work toward a student who functions on all levels.

The tools are all out there now, even more so than in the old world.

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Is it practical to cater for learner styles in e-learning?

So the question is, how do you categorise learners and identify the appropriate style for them? There are a number of ways of ‘pigeon-holing’ people – so which aspects do you cater for in your diagnosis of learner style? I have had experience of using two such techniques, and theoretically they seem to be equally valid.

1 Neurolinguistic programming – VAK

The NLP Visual, Audio, or Kinaesthetic (VAK) system has become quite famous since I first met it in 1993. The premise is that you are a Visual, Audio, or Kinaesthetic learner – meaning that you learn best through visual input like slides and handouts, by listening to lectures and audio files, or by experiencing and doing, for example conducting scientific experiments and practical projects. Once you have found your designated style, you know how you can best experience education, using specific VAK input. You can read more about this system here http://www.denisfleming.com/eft-nlp.html.

2 Honey & Mumford’s Learning Styles Questionnaire – LSQ

The LSQ system appeals more to the character traits that we most typically assign to people; we tend to describe people as outgoing, introverted, thinkers or practical – in natural conversation more than we call them visual or auditory. The LSQ describes people as Pragmatists, Reflectors, Activists or Theorists – Pragmatists like to learn with an eye on practical applications; Reflectors like to consider things carefully in their own time and like tasks that they can just get on with alone; Activists like excitement and groupwork, and an element of competition; and Theorists like to develop a holistic view of their learning, using careful planning. Instead of pandering to these styles, the point of the LSQ system is to develop the areas which do not come naturally to the student, with the aim of developing a well-rounded learner who can interact in a number of ways. More information about this system can be found at www.peterhoney.com/content/LearningStylesQuestionnaire.html

You may think that the opportunities provided by an e-learning environment would make it easier to devise learning systems that cater for a specific learning style – or it might be that the very nature of learning from a desk makes it impossible to cater for all styles.

In the next post I will look into how just one of these systems, the Learning Styles Questionnaire, might work within the e-learning context.

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Learning needs some level of interaction; can this happen online?

A little trip down memory lane takes me to the year I spent at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Belgium. Unlike the tutorial-based system I was used to at the University of Sussex, all education was provided through lectures, each with over a hundred participants. And they were all taking notes by using a highlighter pen on printouts with the text of the lectures in, almost like they were just checking that the lecturer was sticking to the script. I learnt absolutely nothing.

Apparently, cognitive psychology research has shown that “people … do not remember much of what they hear in lectures … if you supplant the lecture with a presentation that is designed to work more in accord with how most people learn, test scores go from 41% for the … lecture class to 74% for the interactive class” (http://www.hg2s.com/blog/2012/01/25/shut-up-and-teach-or-why-science-says-the-lecture-is-a-bad-idea/). I don’t think this comes as much of a surprise to anyone.

This dependence on tradition is as dangerous for universities as it is for other industries that have relied on ancient tools. People can take 400 books around in their handbags, they can carry around an entire record collection in the palm of their hands, and they can study well away from an educational institution. The issue is: how are you encouraged to use the information in the lecture? The lecture itself can be easily delivered online, better than in the traditional classroom; there will be nowhere for a substandard lecturer to hide when you can see lecturers from Harvard or Cambridge at your desk, replaying them at any time of the day or night.

Which brings us back to the question of real interaction that underpins real education with real practice in a real community. We know that tutorials are perfectly possible online; they can be supplemented with student discussions within designated online forums, and with online student conversations. And it goes without saying that all these interactions, be they written, audio or video can be recorded and watched again – something that was never possible in the old model.

Good education is, and has always been, about delivering the right teaching materials and message to receptive minds in the appropriate cognitive style. And ensuring that is increasingly the job of a great facilitator or tutor.

Deslauriers, Loius, Schelew, Ellen and Wieman, Carl, Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class, Science 13 May 2011: Vol. 332 no. 6031 pp. 862-864

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• 1 wooden desk (each with flip-top and inkwell)
• 1 blackboard
• 1 notebook and pen
• some books
• 1 tape player
• 1 window to stare out of
• and 1 teacher

Once in a blue moon the teacher would manage to procure an overhead projector which would magically project his badly-traced map from an acetate onto the grimy magnolia wall….

Things have moved on since the blackboard ...

Times have most definitely changed!

Nowadays there is no inkwell but instead camera phone filming the lecture, the blackboard is now an interactive whiteboard which allows the tutor to instantly access any webpage, video, powerpoint presentation or document which either the tutor or the students may annotate. Students who miss classes may find handouts and other course content uploaded onto a virtual learning environment where they may collaborate on group projects whilst they sit in their bedrooms, on the train or in a café.

Despite the gizmos, the platforms and the bombardment of information however, a student still needs the support of a good tutor – or guide – to succeed:

• A good tutor knows exactly what knowledge the student has to obtain in order to succeed, and how and where to find it;
• A good tutor knows how to synthesise this knowledge, how to pass it on in a way that is both intelligible and memorable and how to help the student interpret it;
• A good tutor can identify the type of learner each student is (and what he or she needs) through the way each one learns and the mistakes each makes.
• A good tutor can lead the student to reflect on these mistakes and demonstrate the learning tools and strategies the student needs in order to eliminate them.

In a world of unlimited information, selecting and using it all correctly still requires the guiding hand of a professional, be they on- or off-line.

Do you agree about the overriding importance of the tutor in future education? 

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A genuine worry with many people is – if you earn your qualification online, how does anyone really know it’s your work? This is not a new issue, and it is not confined to the Internet. People have been pretending to be other people for a very long time – and ‘fraud’ is not new. And it used to be easier – watch the film Catch Me If You Can for more on this! That’s why schools and colleges have become very good at knowing when there’s something afoot.

So You Think Cheating Is Easy?

Accredited online educators whose students are working toward a formal qualification require proof of identity from different sources at the start of a course. And throughout the course, tutors who are working closely with students will notice if the quality or style of work changes dramatically overnight. Students who try and hoodwink their tutors in any way, either by plagiarism or by getting someone else to do the work for them, are summarily thrown off the course.

And if this does not happen, the institution itself is at fault, and will soon lose its accreditation. So they do check very carefully!

If you think about it, what’s the point of getting someone else to do your work? You will end up without the knowledge you have invested in, and your course will be useless. Just a scrap of paper …

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The Best Global Universities

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