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Use your learning style preferences
Based on the ILS Questionnaire, what are your learning style preferences?
This learning style model provides insights for your learning based on these four dimensions. Select the highlighted dimension which matches your preference for more information. If you are somewhere in the centre then you're very flexible and can adapt either way! It's always useful to explore aspects of the other end of the scale to expand your preferences.
- Do you have an Active or Reflective learning style preference?
- Do you have a Sensing or Intuitive learning style preference?
- Do you have a Verbal or Visual learning style preference?
- Do you have a Global or Sequential learning style preference?
Reflective learning tips
- Find quiet spaces to reflect on information.
- Allow time to reflect over an assignment question.
- Keep a reflective journal to capture your ideas, or a digital recorder to capture your reflections.
Sensing learning tips
- Sensors love facts and like procedural steps to respond to questions and assignments.
- Ask for specific instructions from your lecturer, if you need them.
- Connect abstract information to the real world, and always ask lecturers how the information relates to the practical world, if they're dealing with abstract ideas.
Intuitive learning tips
- You thrive on innovation, creativity and exploring concepts and finding relationships between ideas. They love the world of possibilities.
- You can often find memory work boring and difficult, so be creative in linking the detail to the conceptual to make the memory work relevant.
- Be careful to pay attention to detail and check your calculations and question responses.
- In an exam, read the full question before responding to it.
Verbal learning tips
- Work in groups and discuss material with your friends and in study groups.
- Summarise material in your own words.
- Join relevant subject electronic discussion lists.
- Use word connections to link your ideas.
- You may choose to present your ideas orally rather than writing them if you have a choice in assessment formats.
- Record your ideas and thinking on a sound recorder and play this back to type out notes or write reports or essays.
Visual learning tips
- Visual learners love diagrams, maps, concept maps and photographs.
- Use any multimedia CD learning modules for your subject or visual online resources, in addition to your text books.
- Use concept mapping to organise information.
- Anchor information visually.
- Use colour and highlighters in your reading.
- Colour-code some of your writing ideas if you find it helpful.
- Use coloured paper or plastic tab inserts to locate specific ideas in a book.
Global learning tips
'When I was doing Biochemistry, I had a lecturer who would just go straight into the reaction and so he'd just launch into the Kreb cycle and would go straight into all the minute details. I was always lost because I needed to know how this fitted into the bigger picture of cells and so on. I finally asked him to provide the context of all the reactions at the start of each lecture, and since then, it's been so much easier for me.'
Marcus
- As global learners tend to learn large chunks of material, they tend to connect the details later. It's a bit like a jigsaw, global learners start on the perimeter and work on bits inward.
- Always get the big picture of the topic.
- Concept mapping software can be very useful to see the big picture.
- Ensure that you also focus on the detail in your learning, even though you may find this difficult, but always start from the bigger picture.
- To see the detail use logical connectors such as 'so', 'because' and so on to connect details.
Sequential learning tips
- You thrive on logic and learning small chunks at a time, and then building on them.
- You can strengthen your global thinking by linking your topics to the bigger picture and across your subjects.
- When you're summarising your subjects and preparing for exams, try and put together an overall picture of the topic.
- Don't give up if you don't get every bit of detail at first.
Did you learn something new about yourself? Go back to do other quizzes or go on to Expand your learning approaches.
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Active learning tips