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Introduction
to the DVC Learning Style Survey for College
written by:
Catherine Jester, Learning Disability Specialist© Copyright 2000 For
Educational Uses Only
adapted for the Web by:
Suzanne Miller, Instructor, Math and Multimedia © Copyright 2000

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Visual,
Auditory, or Tactile/ Kinesthetic Learner.
To get you started thinking about your learning style, think about the way in
which you remember a phone number. Do you see, in your mind's eye, how the
numbers look on the phone? Or can you "see" the number on that
piece of paper, picturing it exactly as you wrote it down? You might be a
Visual Learner. Or, perhaps you can "hear" the number in the way
that someone recited it to you. In this case, you might be an Auditory
Learner. If you "let your fingers do the walking" on the phone,
i.e. your fingers dial the number without looking at the phone, you may be a
Tactile/ Kinesthetic Learner.

This way of looking at learning style uses the different channels of
perception (seeing, hearing, touching/moving) as its
model. This is a somewhat simplistic view of a very complicated subject (the
human brain). However, looking at learning style from a perceptual point of
view is a useful place to begin.

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Match
Your Learning Style and Strategies
While there is no "good" or "bad" learning style, there
can be a good or bad match between the way you best learn and the way a
particular course is taught. Suppose you are a Visual Learner enrolled in a
traditional lecture course. You feel that the instructor drones on for hours
and you can't pay attention or stay interested in the class. There's a
mismatch here between your learning style and the instructional environment
of the class. As soon as you understand this mismatch, you can find ways to
adapt your style to ensure your success in the class. You might start tape
recording the lectures so that you don't have to worry about missing
important information. You might decide to draw diagrams that illustrate the
ideas being presented in lecture. You might go to the Media Center
and check out a video to help provide some additional information on course
material you're not sure about. What you're doing is developing learning
strategies that work for you because they are based on your knowledge of your
own learning style.

To find your unique learning style take the Learning
Styles Survey now.

Or read a description of the the Four Learning Styles
and associated learning strategies.
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