I need to raise awareness in superusers of learning styles in others to enhance their effectiveness when helping colleagues learn. They are often required to demo/coach on in-house systems and have no formal training experience. Does anyone have any articles, advice, etc. on learning styles that might be useful.
Chrissie Ford
3 Responses
Activists, Reflectors, Theorists and Pragmatists
Hi Chrissie
You are welcome to a handout that has definitions of activist, reflector, theorist and pragmatist, and which gives some examples of when each is likely to learn best and least well. It could be integrated with an activity, e.g., examples of feedback statements on training evaluation forms and who is most likely to say that they liked/didn’t like the PowerPoint presentations, practical workshops, role-play, etcetera. Or it could be linked to training design and delivery to cater for diversity in learning styles.
learning styles awareness
Hi Chrissie
There are many models of learning style – what ones do you use in other parts of your organisation or training/ development programmes? Sometimes using a consiatant approach rather than a ‘perfect model’ is more important.
If you do not yet have a consistant model I would recommend the Honey & Mumford Learning styles (LSQ). It is simple to understand and easy to apply. It is available from http://peterhoney.com as a paper or on line product.
Please be careful about copying printed versions as this material is copyrighted and owners of training and learning based copyright are increasingly protecting this IP (and rightly so).
Mike
Are Learning Styles the answer?
Providing non-trainers with learning styles might well make them aware of the different ways in which people learn, but it could also make their task seem four (or more, depending on which learning styles you use)times more complicated and confusing – and consequently make them even less effective!
In my experience the biggest effectiveness issue with non-trainers is that they tend to focus on what interests them rather than what learners need to know.
So improving your non-trainers’ effectiveness might initially be better achieved by looking at their content with them and developing it to focus on exactly what knowledge/skills the learners need to ‘walk away with’.
If your non-trainers make this mental shift from being ‘superusers’ with all the knowledge to being people whose purpose is simply to serve the needs of the learners, then trainerdom may well follow…