Team B Learning Tour, Inc.

Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic (VAK) Learning Styles

In this course, you will learn that the VAK Learning Style uses the three main sensory receivers - Vision, Auditory,
and Kinesthetic (movement) to determine the dominate learning style. Learners use all three to receive information. However,
one or more of these receiving styles is normally dominant. This dominant style defines the best way for a person to learn
new information by filtering what is to be learned. This style may not always to be the same for some tasks. The learner
may prefer one style of learning for one task, and a combination of others for another task.

Classically, our learning style is forced upon us through life like this: In grades kindergarten to third, new information is
presented to us kinesthetically; grades 4 to 8 are visually presented; while grades 9 to college and on into the business
learning environment, information is presented to us auditory by lectures.

As trainers, we need to present information using all three styles. This allows all learners, no matter what their preferred
style is, the opportunity to become involved. It also allows a learner to be presented with the other two methods of
reinforcement. Just because we prefer one style, does not mean that the other two do us no good. On the contrary,
they help us to learn even faster by reinforcing the material.

Carl Jung and Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

During the early 1900s, Carl Jung established a field identifying distinct personality patterns. Many theorists have since
broken these patterns into categories attempting to make them easier to understand. Carl Jung was a contemporary of
Sigmund Freud and a leading exponent of Gestalt personality theory. Jung developed a ground-breaking personality
theory that introduced two attitudes - extraversion and introversion (1933a). Later he described human behavior as a
combination of four psychic functions - thinking/feeling and intuition/sensation (1933b). Thinking and feeling are said to
be rational functions because they both require acts of judgments. Sensation and intuition involve immediate experiences.

The most widely used personality survey instrument is the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI can be an
aid in understanding the individual differences. This is why it is more complicated than the other models discussed here,
since they are strictly learning models why the MBTI is a personality model. However, our personality does play an
important part in determining our learning style. And it does tie in within the other models so we will discuss its part in
the the learning process during this course.

Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences

Discover in this course Howard Gardner's theory that there are multiple intelligences, and that we all use one or two for
the most effective learning. Our culture teaches, tests, reinforces and rewards primarily two kinds of intelligence: verbal/linguistic
and logical/mathematical. His theory proposes that there are at least eight other kinds of intelligence that are equally
important. They are "languages" that most people speak, and that cut through cultural, educational, and ability differences.

Reference:
ISD-Development (2002). Learning Styles. Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/learning/styles.html