The Four Categories of Learning Styles
There are several different learning styles according to Richard M Felder and Barbara A Solomon from North Carolina State University. Let’s take a closer look at these learning styles and go more in-depth with each category and see how they apply to us. The four categories that we will be taking a look at are active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal and sequential/global. Let’s begin with the active learners. Active learners tend to retain and understand information best by doing something active with it, discussing or applying it, or explaining it to others and tend to like group work. Reflective learners prefer to think about their topic quietly first. Reflective learners also prefer to work alone.
Next we have sensing learners. Sensing learners tend to like facts and are also called sensors. Sensors like solving problems by well-established methods and dislike complication and surprises. Sensors tend to be patient with details and good at memorizing facts and doing hands on work. Intuitive learners often prefer discovering possibilities and relationships. Intuitors like innovation and dislike repetition. Intuitors are better at grasping new concepts and are often more comfortable than sensors with abstractions and mathematical formulations.
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The next category is visual and verbal learners. Visual learners remember best when they see pictures, diagrams, flow charts, time lines, films and demonstrations. Visual learners also get more out of words written and spoken explanations. Verbal learners work best in groups. They gain most of their understanding by hearing explanations.
Last we have Sequential and global learners. Sequential tend to gain understanding in linear steps with each step following logically from the previous one. Global learners like to see the big picture first. The details will come later. Global learners are able to solve complex problems fast or put together in novel ways once they have grasped the big picture, but have difficulty explaining how they did it.
For myself, I am a very active learner. For instance lets take soccer. I like to go through drills and have them explained to me. I also like to be shown how to do something, so I guess you could say I am also a visual learner. Repetition is good for me as well. Drills play an important part of my learning skills in soccer so I guess you could also say I am a sensor. Being an active learner, I like working in groups with others. As an athlete for most sports, you are always in a group, or what we call a team. Having to work together as a team, you rely on each other and not just yourself. I think that’s where being an active learner for me comes in. I hate doing things on my own. I like to be with other people to learn from them and feed off of them. Learning from other people’s mistakes as well as my own helps to build character.
I am very competitive, so when it comes to being in a group I like to be the one to encourage or get the team pumped up before games. I try to be patient with learning new things in soccer and I dislike complicated situations when people make mountains out of mole hills. I am also a visual learner compared to being a verbal learner. It is very difficult for me to be told how to do something without seeing it. For example, I taught myself how to do a flip throw in. A flip throw in is when the ball goes out-of-bounds and instead of just throwing the ball in, I do a front flip with the ball in my hands. This helps make the ball go twice as far kind of like a front hand-spring. I was told how to do it but I couldn’t comprehend it.
I turned to YouTube to see how it was done. After watching it several times on YouTube I then got the nerve to try it myself. To my surprise I was successful. Another example is when my coach wants me to do a certain soccer move or maybe even a drill and he tells me what to do, I struggle with doing what he wants me to do I need to be shown as well as being told. I pick up on things much faster when I see how its done.In sports I am defiantly a Sequential learner. I like the step-by-step instructions. This gives me better understanding on how to do the task at hand and give me the confidence that I am doing it correctly.
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