Learning Styles
Awareness of your own unique learning style will help you decide which course fits your needs. The entire environment and interaction in online learning requires that you understand how you learn and ways to improve your learning experience. Utilizing this self-awareness means catering your study and communication to suit your individual learning needs. You can find success in any educational setting as long as you understand the ways and means by which you learn.
Learning styles are typically divided into three groups: visual, auditory, and tactile/kinesthetic.
These means that learning takes place in the following ways:
- Listening (auditory)
- Reading (visual)
- Seeing (visual)
- Speaking (auditory)
- Doing (Tactile/Kinesthetic)
Listening, reading and seeing are passive learning methods while speaking and doing are active ways of learning. Our ability to retain knowledge depends upon our learning type and the mix of teaching styles targeting different learning styles. Usually we learn through a combination of these learning styles. More and more, we are learning that environment plays a large roll in retention and engagement.
Active Learning
One of the best tests of knowledge retention is the ability to practice what you have learned. For this reason, doing and speaking are active ways of retaining knowledge. When speaking is combined with doing, we are able to work out our questions in a logical, comfortable manner. Active learning leads to high knowledge retention.
Passive Learning
Seeing, hearing and reading are the passive learning forms and enable less retention than active learning. A combination or a process of listening, seeing, and reading will lead to a high rate of retention.
How does this relate to E-Learning
Online classes may seem to be entirely passive learning, in that, course materials must be read the vacuum of your house or wherever you do coursework. However, these classes include an important active learning component which allows students to interact each other and the instructor through emails, chatting, and writing. The on-demand nature of e-learning is another contributing factor for success. Students choose the courses they want in the forms that they want them, this requires personal investment. Personal investment in a course of study that enriches your life is the most powerful aid to retention and recipe for success in an online learning environment.
Understanding your individualities will enable you to find a course that meets your needs.
Education is what you make of it. If you are passionate and invested in success, you will find it, but you must be methodical in finding the right route to online learning success.
Finding the Right School
With so many online learning programs available, it is very difficult to differentiate between them and choose the right one for you. With a variety of technology tools employed in online learning it is important for you to be aware of what teaching methods are being used. The most important thing you can do as a student is to ask the institutions in which you are interested as many questions about the methodology of teaching and the learning styles it caters towards.
