“The things we have to learn before we do them, we learn by doing them” – Aristotle

Last weekend me and Allison travelled by car down to the French north coast – also called Cote d’Opale – a beautiful place of beaches and cliffs. We ended up taking a chance for a hostel (suspiciously cheap at €10 per night) in a village called Montreuil-sur-Mer. It proved to be a great choice as the hostel was located within the compounds of a medieval castle – which we had to ourselves!

Staying a night a hostel in a small french town in a medieval castle was an experience that I won’t forget. One of quite a few in the past year. My work and AIESEC has enabled me to be in many places and meet a lot of different people – as well as do things I wasn’t prepared for. This has left me thinking many times – how do you make the most of these kind of experiences?

Since a long time back (think Aristotle & Confucius) people have known that we learn by doing, by experiencing. In 1984 David Kolb published a book that has since shaped the discussion on the impact of direct exprience in learning – he created a model describing learning to start from experience, continue with reflection and abstraction of key concepts and then action or practical use of the learning acquired. As any model, it’s certainly not perfect and much can be said about it – but it does provide you with a framework to make the most out of your experiences.

With this framework in mind I have three personal things that I try to do in order to have more effective experiential learning in my life. The first of which I’ll share today.

1. Seek out new things to learn – and never stop! Stimulate your divergent thinking by being in new and unexpected places. I find travelling for me, like our trip to France, is a way of discovering new and unexpected things to learn and try to understand- but your ways will of course differ.

The key is simply to always be curious and try to go deeper, understand better and look at it from a new light. If you find yourself ever thinking “that would be cool to do” – then write it down and make a deal with yourself to go ahead and try. This type of experimentation got me to try things like hang gliding, not me in the video (I saw it on a Discovery show, wrote it down and then tried it) – a sport I would really like to take up for real.

“Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand.” – Confucius

Btw. today is a good day to start.

Myte 4: Undervisning, der er tilpasset forskellige læringsstile, forbedrer læringseffekten signifikant.

Hvad tror du?

• Sandt?
• Falsk?
• Ved ikke

Mange teoretikere har beskæftiget sig med læringsstile. I den danske folkeskole er Rita Dunn & Kenneth Dunn de mest kendte ligesom Howard Gardners teori om de mange forskellige intelligenser nyder en vis i udbredelse i Danmark. (Marie Carbos teori om læsestile ligner Gardners tankegang en del). Også Handelshøjskolens Ole Lauridsen har med entusiasme påstået at en hensyntagen til læringsstile er noget der gavner undervisningen og læringseffekten.
David Kolbs læringscirkel er ofte baggrund for de forskellige positioner, når der diskuteres læringsstile.

Men uanset hvem der er tale om, så hævder de at mennesker har forskellige måder at lære på. De lyder da også alle meget overbevisende og det er sikkert rigtigt, at vi lærer forskelligt da vi jo er unikke individer. Så den del kan jeg godt acceptere.

Men det vigtigste spørgsmål i denne forbindelse er vel om en målrettet hensyntagen til diverse læringsstile signifikant øger læringseffekten? Her tvivler jeg mere – faktisk ret meget!

Will Thalheimer har ligefrem udsat en dusør på 1000 dollars til den, der i et kontrolleret miljø kan påvise, at hensyntagen til deltagernes læringsstile giver en målbar bedre læringseffekt end i en kontrolgruppe, hvor der ikke tages dette hensyn.

”Learning Styles Instructional-Design Challenge

I’ve been suspicious about the learning-styles bandwagon for many years. The learning-style argument has gone something like this: If instructional designers know the learning style of their learners, they can develop material specifically to help those learners, and such extra efforts are worth the trouble.

I have my doubts, but am open to being proven wrong…..

To reiterate, the challenge is this: 

Can an e-learning program that utilizes learning-style information outperform an e-learning program that doesn’t utilize such information by 10% or more on a realistic test of learning, even it is allowed to cost up to twice as much to build?

$1,000 says it just doesn’t happen in the real-world of instructional design. $1,000 says we ought to stop wasting millions trying to cater to this phantom curse.”
http://www.willatworklearning.com/2006/08/learning_styles.html

Der findes i hvert fald ikke nogen overbevisende undersøgelser, der understøtter teoriernes påståede effekter. Det er selvklart for mig at mange forskellige pædagogiske metoder, der inkluderer praktiske øvelser og anvender så mange sanser som det giver mening, opleves som spændende, differentieret og mest af alt: varieret.

Jeg tror variation i undervisningen er nøglen til forståelsen af, hvorfor teorierne om læringsstile, tænkestile, læsestile mv. er blevet så populære.

Så myte 4 er indtil videre at betragte som værende falsk. Det er endnu ikke påvist at en undervisers vægtning af deltagernes læringsstile har nogen signifikant indflydelse på deltagerne udbytte eller læringseffekt.

Men selv om det empiriske bevismateriale er svagt med hensyn til at understøtte de forskellige teorier om læringsstile, så er det vigtigt at forstå:

At stille spørgsmålstegn ved validiteten af læringsstiles betydning for læring er ikke det samme som at benægte individuelle forskelle blandt deltagerne!

Skal man så undlade at beskæftige sig med læringsstile?

Nej, bestemt ikke. Indsigt i disse teorier og diskussioner kan hjælpe dig med at variere dine e-læringsprogrammer. Og variation er et vigtigt element i al undervisning. Gentagelse fremmer forståelsen siges det, men en relevant, motiverende og varieret undervisning giver en endnu større læringseffekt.