Kolb Learning Styles
Learning styles are varied and to understand them is to the educators advantage when teaching a course. The educator can adjust their course to address the learning styles present. After taking the Kolb Learning Style Inventory the results indicated that I have an accommodating learning style. I actually agree with the results for many situations, but I feel I use parts of all learning styles. I can’t help but feel insulted that I was not a thinker.
I can see the accommodating style emerge when I work in groups or teams. I enjoy leading and organizing the team in order to get the task completed.The varied learning styles keep the team balanced and provide needed input for a successful team. I am impatient when working with groups when they spend too much time sitting around talking and never appear to accomplish anything(I suppose these are the assimilation and converging people). If the group has a solution in mind, I say let’s try it. If this does not work then back to the drawing board. I am a “hands-on” kind of person. I do not mind jumping in and working on a solution. An example could be equipment failure. If I cannot fix the equipment then we switch modes of teaching from power point to posters, handouts, discussion and the text book. I try to be flexible and adapt to the given situation.
Recently I took a course in Dental Anesthesia. After literally hours of lecture we proceeded to the clinic to practice what we learned. I found it very difficult to understand exactly where we were going to place the needle even though I saw numerous photographs. Once in the clinic one look was worth a thousand photos. One injection was a greater learning experience than all the hours of lecture. Hands-on learning is definitely a comfortable learning style for me. I can see where developing the other learning styles would strengthen me and make me a balanced learner, but will take work on my part. Knowledge of the different learning styles will help me as a leader of the group to guide the group through the phases of the learning cycle.
