College can be difficult, especially when a student struggles to understand his or her strengths and weaknesses. Many students come to college with little sense for why they are there or how they are going to utilize their degree in order to move forward into their careers. With that in mind, understanding one’s own learning styles is critically important for having a productive college experience. This can help students know how to study, and it can help them figure out a proper approach for managing the difficulties that can come when a student goes off to college. This paper will discussion some of my motivations for going to college, and it will discuss my results on various learning inventories, including my own assessment on whether those particular tests are reflective of my own feelings about my learning style.
I chose to go to college because I recognize that it can provide me with both knowledge and credentials that will be important going forward. I recognize that a major part of college’s value is the credential that a degree provides. There are many walls and barriers that a student cannot break down unless he or she has a college degree. Likewise, I recognize that college is not just about gaining a piece of paper that will open doors. In addition, it is the sort of learning experience that can teach a person not just what to think, but also how to think. I came to college to learn from professors who challenged me and forced me to expand my educational horizons in a unique way so that I would later become a more effective part of the professional world.
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The Bixler Learning Inventory is designed to provide students with a simple picture of what their learning style is all about (Bixler, 2010). It spits out a very simple result, and in my case, the test revealed that I am a visual learner. The purpose of this test and assessment is to reveal the best methods of learning for each individual student. Likewise, it is designed to show that student the things that the student might do in order to get more out of school. According to this assessment, I am supposed to be the kind of student that ultimately benefits from using things like notecards, charts, and graphics.
It encourages me to make use of these tools so that I can better understand the material that is being presented. I would say that this assessment is mostly on-point. In some of my classes in the college experience, I have been asked to learn simply from listening to the teacher speak. While there might be some students who can walk away from this with a full understanding of the material, I do much better when I am able to see the concepts in action. What this means, then, is that I do better when I am trying to utilize various graphic helpers to take in information. While I have never been a student who has loved notecards and the like, I have made use of various visual tools to help improve my performance overall.
The Felder and Solomon learning assessment is more designed to provide a student with a scale, allowing that student to see where they fall in a number of different categories (Felder & Soloman, n.d.). While the previously cited assessment is designed to show one definitive answer on what a student is all about, this one is designed to give a range. What this means is that it provides a more complex answer, and it allows a student to recognize where he or she falls in comparison to the average student.
According to the assessment, I have a strong preference for reflective learning. Reflective learning is opposite active learning on the assessment’s scale. Active learners tend to learn by doing and applying information right away, whereas reflective learners tend to need to think about information for a while before using it. I tend to think this is true, as I do need some time by myself to think about a given piece of information before I can get to using it. In addition, the assessment claims that I have a small preference for “sensing” as opposed to intuitive learning. Sensing learners tend to like learning facts more than learning the complex relationships between things. I do not necessarily believe that this is true, but at the same time, I must recognize that the assessment only put me slightly onto the sensing side.
I am also right in the middle between visual learning and verbal learning, with a slight lean toward visual. This supports the previous test, though it does not support the previous finding as strongly as I would have thought. In addition, I am said to be a sequential, rather than global, learner. This means that I tend to learn things in distinct steps, with logic of one following from the next. I do believe this to be true, as I tend to be a very distinct, logical actor who likes to see the way that concepts grow off of one another.
Ultimately, school is difficult, but it becomes easier when one understands his own learning style. I came to college because I wanted to learn more about myself and give myself the best chance to do well at the next level. By taking two different assessments, I have learned that I am a visual learner who also tends to be very logical in thinking. These things will be important for me moving forward, both in my continuing academic career and in my professional career.
