8 ms·

Study: Students did not benefit from studying according to “learning style”

147 points by empath75 8y ago

s0rce 8y ago
While completely anecdotal I have realized I learn dramatically better by reading the material as opposed to listening to it (except for physical tasks like tying a knot where having someone show you is helpful). Over the years, especially in graduate school I basically stopped trying to learn in lecture and read the material afterwords. Maybe this has been incorrect or I'm an outlier. Regardless, I'm not sure what to make of the last statement in the article being no longer true, "I can’t learn subject X because I am a visual learner", was this ever true, seems like simply an excuse, you should be able to figure out how you need to learn best and then determine how to get the material in an appropriate form.
- adamnemecek 8y ago
  I feel like all people learn better his way. The current system is a remnant of a time when books were expensive and a farmers son might have a hard time affording books.
  - _rpd 8y ago
    There are subjects so specialized that there is no textbook, and the time of the lecturer is so valuable that prep time for teaching is always going to be minimal. In these cases, lecturing is justifiable, but they are vanishingly rare. If there is a textbook then lecturing is pointless at best and probably harmful.
    - adamnemecek 8y ago
      Sure however this isn’t how the system is set up.
      - anonymous5133 8y ago
        We can change the system, or replace it with something better.
        randomdata 8y ago
        Can we? We've built the system to replace it have seen it transition into widespread use. However, it turns out that there are strong emotional ties to the old system and few want to let it go.
  - davidmurdoch 8y ago
    Honest question here: are textbooks not expensive anymore? Circa 2003 I'd pay ~$600/semester for course textbooks.
- conistonwater 8y ago
  Lectures are a notoriously inefficient method of teaching, though, so you probably aren't comparing "merely" listening vs reading. One simple way to introduce a difference is if you're just passively listening to a lecture vs actively studying material when reading (conventional theory says the latter is better, because of it being active, IIUC). You might have decent study skills of your own. Learning styles are a surprisingly specific idea (i.e., it refers to specific differences between people and makes specific predictions about how well they'd do when learning in specific ways, which is what doesn't turn out to exist), so you could totally have learning styles turn out to be bunk, yet have plenty to say about different teaching methods. Education research literature is full of stuff by people trying different things, that's where inverted classrooms came from, but that's not anything to do with learning styles.
  - mamon 8y ago
    Lectures as a form of teaching made sense at the time when they were first introduced: the Middle Ages. That was before printing press was invented, books were rare and expensive items so the students would gather in a big hall and the professor would read the book aloud, which for most students would be the only chance in their life to learn from it. Now that we have invented not only the print, but also computers, ebook readers, tablets, the lectures as a form of teaching are complete waste of time - trading them for more classroom/lab time is the way to go.
    - faceplanted 8y ago
      You're forgetting the most important selling point of lectures: Anyone can give them with little to no preparation if they know the material. Lectures are basically the "default" teaching method, you take something you already know and explain it piece by piece. putting knowledge down in any form of media is almost inherently harder and more expensive than just explaining it in person or on camera. Back in university, every time I had to find an explanation for something online on YouTube, recorded lectures were usually the worst choice, if I had a choice, because there was often no produced video explaining something, but there were always lectures recorded from somewhere. Because lectures are easy. I did actually find one place where lectures were better than directly reading the material, and it was mathematics lectures, just because amount of symbols and obscure language that often goes into putting something mathematical down in text over just explaining it can be ridiculous to someone like me who has never managed to learn the latin and greek alphabets however many times I tried.
- nol13 8y ago
  Yup. I might read one section over a few times before moving on, and/or spend way less time in others. Reading I go at the pace I can digest it, not the pace of the lecturer.
- anonymous5133 8y ago
  I am working on an educational related project. Pretty much what I do is have traditional textbook type materials for students to read. I also have the same materials in a visual interactive type lecture that basically explains/shows how to do something followed by some sort of interactive exercise where the student can apply the previously taught materials. The interactive exercises also act as a way to teach material as well. By analyzing how the student interacts with the exercise I can determine how well they understand the lesson. Nothing is locked in. If students don't want to read the textbook then they don't have to. Likewise, if students don't want to listen to the lectures then they don't have to either they can skip to the exercises. After learning about 10 of these lessons that compose the chapter they can take a skills quiz to see how well they know the material. I intentionally make all the skill quizzes extra hard just to make sure students know the material before progressing to the next chapter. If you have ever used codecademy then it is very similar. The only difference is my project is focused on entire college courses. If you took MIT OCW and combined it with codecademy then that is basically what I am working on. I am combining the formal structure of a college course with the technological innovation seen in codecademy.
djajshgsjja 8y ago
Typical science reporting: “we couldn’t prove x causes y” becomes “we proved x does not cause y”.
- sirclueless 8y ago
  The reporter doesn't make any claims like that. The word "prove" or "proof" don't appear at all. Instead they say, "The findings do not support the learning styles concept," and "Student grade performance was not correlated in any meaningful way with their dominant learning style or with any learning style(s) they scored highly on." If there's a complaint to be had here, it's that the HN poster changed the word "did" to "do" in the headline while posting here.
  - rectang 8y ago
    > the HN poster changed the word "did" to "do" in the headline Well spotted! That's a pretty misleading change.
    - dang 8y ago
      Probably because the 80 char limit kicked in. But we can squeeze in "did" by squeezing out "their".
      - empath75 8y ago
        Yeah I was 1 character over the limit.
      - forapurpose 8y ago
        Could someone add (2015) to the story linked below? It seems to have been overlooked, and the title is otherwise misleading about an alarming topic. Thanks. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17112746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17112746
        dang 8y ago
adamnemecek 8y ago
Ok so what exactly is the universal learning style?
- ta1357 8y ago
  Doing, failing, reflection.
  - baron816 8y ago
    Reflection is the main thing. Think about the topic at a later date, try to dig deeper, compare and contrast it against similar concepts, apply it to different scenarios, summarize it in your own words and write that down, teach it to another person, etc.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  The article gives some examples, motly experiential engagement. "Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand."
themodelplumber 8y ago
Here is the "learning styles" in question: > The acronym VARK stands for Visual, Aural, Read/write, and Kinesthetic sensory modalities that are used for learning information. Fleming and Mills (1992) suggested four modalities that seemed to reflect the experiences of the students and teachers. Although there is some overlap between them they are defined as follows. [For a detailed description of the initial construction and limitations of VARK, and for other works on learning styles, see the bibliography and the seminal article.] From: http://vark-learn.com/introduction-to-vark/the-vark-modalities/ http://vark-learn.com/introduction-to-vark/the-vark-modaliti... (I wish the writing/linking could be amended to "VARK learning styles" or even initial-caps "Learning Style," as there are differing theories on learning styles, and a lot of good learning styles theory is probably going to get babied with this bath water...)
2_listerine_pls 8y ago
No such thing as learning styles, it's a myth. https://qz.com/585143/the-concept-of-different-learning-styles-is-one-of-the-greatest-neuroscience-myths/ https://qz.com/585143/the-concept-of-different-learning-styl... > So how did a false belief become so widely-held? In his paper on the subject for Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Howard-Jones argues that it’s not a result of fraud, but of “uniformed interpretations of genuine scientific facts.” The assumption behind learning myths seems to be based on the scientific fact that different regions of the cortex have different roles in visual, auditory, and sensory processing, and so students should learn differently “according to which part of their brain works better.” However, writes Howard-Jones, “the brain’s interconnectivity makes such an assumption unsound.”
- waynecochran 8y ago
  I always thought it was counter productive to “pigeon hole” oneself as only able to learn one way. The whole “I’m a visual learner” becomes a self-fulfilling reinforced statement. Sort of like people who say they are not a “math person”... well if you think that way you certainly won’t be.
  - rwnspace 8y ago
    I find it's much more effective to think of yourself as a secret agent, superhero or a magician. When you can catch a flying plane a bit of calculus is a small hurdle, when you can cast arcane, mystical spells, struggling with the borrow-checker in Rust is just a temporary setback.
    - thesz 8y ago
      I think that "secret agent" analogy is very deep. Secret agent must monitor what he is doing and the results of his actions and make his actions either the best possible (wash a dish in a best possible way) or most compatible with ways of others (put washed dish where other think it should belong). Deliberate practice grows here naturally. And this attitude extends everywhere, not just to programming and/or washing dishes.
excalibur 8y ago
> Other activities, such as using flash cards, were associated with poorer performance, perhaps because they were a sign of learning by rote rather than deeper learning. But that's remarkably similar to the way "Deep Learning" is typically achieved. Perhaps it's a bit of a misnomer.
- ggm 8y ago
  It's a complete misnomer. It's such a bad fit, it has to be marketing.
swoorup 8y ago
I found learning by history to be easier. For example if i want to understand certain thoery, it helps me by understanding its history, its origin and why it was needed. I think this is however too slow if you need to consume more amount of information.
coding123 8y ago
Curious thought process... we spend about 12-20 years of our life going at a specific pace to learning "stuff" in different categories. What if you were given a choice - Learn the stuff in a class in 12-20 years of wasted time OR just have a list of all the material you must know, along with sample questions (so you know you're learning the right material) and have a venue to turn in work (so you get feedback). But instead of spending 12-20 (or more) years, you are given the choice to do whatever pace you want. So in that sense, could really fast people basically "Doogie Howser" it and start a career by 15? And possibly a related question - instead of doing ANY higher learning activities, we push all that into vocations - basically if you want to be a rocket scientist you ... start being a rocket scientist intern, learn the trade by being a peon in the shops?
- EGreg 8y ago
  http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158
- j45 8y ago
  One issue is learning is largely prepared and delivered as a linear experience. Our paths in life, are not linear. What we learn, grow from, transfer skills through is not as pretty as a sequential grade or degree system. Employers care about hiring competencies - institutions try to call it holistic but there remains a poor signal to noise ratio in terms of transferable skills. The traditional 2,000 year old form of higher education is no longer able to keep up with the rate of change in society. Today by the time higher institutions prepare new learning material release, it's outdated.
- mieseratte 8y ago
  As someone who found their path earlier than most, and has a bit of the protestant work ethic I see the appeal. However, there's two problems to this that I can see: First, most folks do not know what they wish to be from a reasonably young age. For the longest time I thought I wanted to be a geologist, probably until about high school, despite having discovered computing at an early age. Funny enough, I never really recognized that I could turn programming into a career. To me it was just something fun that I did. Consider the trope of the college kid who goes to school to find themself, bounces around majors, and graduates late. I know some nations have success tracking students earlier, but that is usually around the high school timeframe at best. Part of early education is setting the foundation and teaching one how to learn. This reduces the amount of years available for "Doogie Howser" self-study down to only four or so, plus an additional three or four for higher learning. Second, even if someone "knows" what they want to do I think many don't necessarily have the drive and resilience for self-guided study and the associated struggle. Many need the structure, and "hand-holding" that comes with a normal classroom. Additionally, some see value in the "well rounded" model of education and so depending on what you want to be it may or may not make sense. Having been of the "I speak English, why study it" school of thought, well, I'm sure this "essay" and the comma atrocities therein speak for itself. Just imagine if I had spent even less time in an English course. If we wanted a more utilitarian society of technicians this would be a good idea, but there are many facets to education besides occupation.
daveguy 8y ago
I always felt that learning styles didn't really have an effect. But I have thought that multiple modalities does improve. Take notes, make flashcards, read, discuss, have others quiz you, etc. I wish they could have included that in the test. Use one modality for 1hr minutes vs 2 modalities for 30 minutes each. It may be just as weak/nonexistent as learning styles in general, but I would hypothesize that using multiple modalities will make a difference over using a single modality.
coldtea 8y ago
They might not have boosted their scores, but were they more comfortable and enjoyed the process more when it used a style that they preferred or not? Also, I find this is one of the cases that personal experience trumps all this "research". Much the same way people were told not to eat this and that (with research supporting all those dietary suggestions) and then those suggestions were found to be false.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  Having fun is different from learning. If fun learning is ineffective, it's not good learning.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Having fun is different from learning. Yes, you can have fun without learning (e.g. at a strip club -- at least without learning something academic that is), and you can learn without having fun. However you can't learn if you're bored out of your mind and tuned out, and having some fun in your learning helps with that.
j45 8y ago
What a refreshing read. This pattern of long-standing beliefs that education academics don't really seem to question seems real as ever. - Academics need as much if not more support as the students they aim to help when it comes to remembering how to learn, and teach, especially with the use of technology. The old saying help yourself before helping others... - The academic education/edtech world seems full of more academic talking heads that are far removed from both teaching, and learning, but not one's credentials. - As a technologist hanging out in Education again.. this appears quite commonly when education academics speak about technology - too many of whom don't understand what technology is capable of, because society has passed most of them by in the baseline technological competency. The results appear to be speaking about things like pedagogy. Pedagogy is how children learn, but academics will talk about Pedgagogies when it comes to adult learning strategies. There's some slightly ostracized academics who are telling it how it is... most in academia won't say much because they don't want their jobs to be threatened. It's truly a sad situation where the instructional industry is concerned more about self preservation than perhaps participating in the lifelong learning themselves that is often preached to their students.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  I have some connections to schools, and "learning styles" is not a major concept at all. "Teaching modalities" (lecture, reading, labs) seems similar at a glance, but it's quite different. It's not that each person has a preferred modality, it's that different modalities have different benefits in a relative non-student-specific way. It's a weird contrarisn fad on HN to constantly rehash old debunkings of research no one in the real world cares about.
  - j45 8y ago
    Nice. By schools, I'm presuming you meant K-12 in the US. My comment is about the post-secondary academic research community focused on education (particularly in North America, and more so in Canada).. Modalities, pedagogies, all are drawing away from the experience that the students are not getting that they should. US post-secondaries are starting to innovate, still good pockets of activity are not making a suit. Happy to chat offline, have been a technologist in delivering digital education (K-12, Post-secondary and corporate) for a while.
rectang 8y ago
I don't have a strong opinion about learning styles. However, and I think this is related, I have strong negative reaction when names in code are not easily pronounceable. Good: "regex", "func". Bad: "regexp", "fn". This is because I hear code aloud in my head when I read it, and if I don't know how to pronounce something it interrupts my reading momentum until I figure out some way to say it. Naturally I suppress my reaction because it's just a coding style thing and not worth arguing about with colleagues and collaborators. But it is definitely a strong enough effect that if other people had my tendency we would never get a keyword like 'fn', at least from other native English speakers. The explanation I've tended to believe is that other people perceive code more visually and less audially than I do.
- stordoff 8y ago
  I'm largely of the opposite group. Having names that aren't pronounceable helps me read code faster, as I don't try to pronounce it, and can just treat the entire word as a unit rather trying to "read" it. I do the same in English when reading fast. I distinctly remember reading "Hermione" in Harry Potter as a child, and, because it was a name I hadn't encountered before, just "reading over" it and not thinking about the actual pronunciation. I didn't think about the actual pronunciation until some years later (probably when it was brought up in the books). Even now, if I try to pay attention to my internal monologue whilst reading, it's often words running into each other or being skipped, unless I deliberately slow down, because I'm not actively subvocalising and I'm reading faster than I would pronounce them.
  - rectang 8y ago
    That makes sense. Then the question in the context of "learning styles" is, if these differences are real, are they actionable -- can we produce measurable differences in outcomes?
  - itronitron 8y ago
    that reminds me of reading Huckleberry Finn and having no idea what Jim was referring to when he used the word 'chile' until I actually sounded it out and then everything Jim was saying made sense
a_bonobo 8y ago
If anyone is interested in the scientific literature on learning, Greg Wilson has been writing a book based on Software Carpentry materials on how to teach programming, which cites a lot of the scientific literature, it's free here: http://third-bit.com/teaching/ http://third-bit.com/teaching/
tgb 8y ago
Isn't this surprising to a huge extent? My gut tells me that it's not that people don't have different learning styles, it's instead a combination of (A) the learning styles not being as obvious as the ones studied here and (B) we aren't exploiting those learning styles effectively. Is it really plausible that all humans learn in exactly the same way? I recall the Feynman story about realizing that some people see the numbers as they count and others hear the numbers. This was tested by having people do either visual or auditory tasks while counting the seconds. People who "saw" the numbers were less consistent counting to 30 seconds when doing something visual at the same time and vice versa for those who heard. How is it plausible that these two groups of people learn to do arithmetic in the same way? How many other little differences are there between people's brains that we don't notice? Maybe we're just terrible at noticing and using the differences that exist.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  First and foremost this is just another social sciences study. Most of everybody is aware of the reproducibility crisis yet seem to fail to connect the dots to new studies - it's not going anywhere which means that science, particularly in the social and physiological sciences, is somehow deeply flawed. That said, this study confirms my own biases so I want to believe. One big reason is to consider the academic output of schools in places such as Korea and China. Learning is extremely structured and more analogous to a factory line than a school, in the US style, and their output absolutely dwarfs ours. The typical argument against this system is that mechanical teaching leads to mechanical thought, which is is supposed to support things such as the fact that China has an abysmal rate of Nobel laureates. However, something missing there is that Nobel Prizes are frequently rewarded long after something is first done when its relevance is proven or otherwise becomes more clear. For instance Stephen Hawking never received a Nobel prize, yet if we observed Hawking Radiation - he likely would have been awarded one for a theoretic hypothesis dating back to 1974. The point there is that as recently as the 1950s Chinese were starving to death by tens of millions and they had little to no academic culture to speak of. Their riveting success is a very much a new thing and so the lack of Nobel standard achievements is something that's not [yet] a reasonable indication of much.
sometimesijust 8y ago
The design of this experiment is terrible. At best it proves that the VARK questionnaire does not correlate with actual learning style but I don't even think it even does that due to the poor experimental design. Perhaps it is leaning heavily on previous findings but since the population selection is so heavily biased to begin with and the course appears to be conventionally taught rather than making equally comprehensive study aides for the different styles. The fact that more than half of the students did not study using the style they self reported to prefer with is also an obvious red flag. Note I believe VARK is over simplified nonsense but so is this research.
jpster 8y ago
FTA > Also, while most students (67 per cent) actually failed to study in a way consistent with their supposedly preferred learning style, those who did study in line with their dominant style did not achieve a better grade in their anatomy class than those who didn’t. Isn't this self-selection? Introducing sampling bias?
himom 8y ago
This reminds me of the unproven teaching fads pushed into public schools in the late ‘70’s and ‘80’s, which causes some educators to leave and start their own private schools which used proven teaching approaches like phonics.
- walshemj 8y ago
  Well phonics was also considered a fad and the optician that diagnosed my dyslexia asked if I had been taught using phonic's as that was though to have worse outcomes for Dyslexics (neurodiverse) students.
supreme_sublime 8y ago
I like seeing people applying science to education. Something I didn't know about until recently is there has been a lot of study done on the other side of the equation; instructional styles. It seems "direct instruction" is by far the leader in terms of outcomes. [0] I'm curious how well known this is and if I was just ignorant. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd_9rszR27s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd_9rszR27s
nurettin 8y ago
I think we choose learning styles just as we choose a lifestyle, a political party, sports team or candidate, or favorite color. It is only meaningful to us. We get discouraged from using, say, visual memory, because it is hard at that moment. But in a proper learning environment based on encouragement, you get over that easily.
JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Certainly we all have preferences. Never mind whether they work better; folks will resist learning the 'wrong way'. So its still something to attend to when teaching.

147 points by empath75 8y ago

While completely anecdotal I have realized I learn dramatically better by reading the material as opposed to listening to it (except for physical tasks like tying a knot where having someone show you is helpful). Over the years, especially in graduate school I basically stopped trying to learn in lecture and read the material afterwords. Maybe this has been incorrect or I'm an outlier. Regardless, I'm not sure what to make of the last statement in the article being no longer true, "I can’t learn subject X because I am a visual learner", was this ever true, seems like simply an excuse, you should be able to figure out how you need to learn best and then determine how to get the material in an appropriate form.

adamnemecek 8y ago
I feel like all people learn better his way. The current system is a remnant of a time when books were expensive and a farmers son might have a hard time affording books.
- _rpd 8y ago
  There are subjects so specialized that there is no textbook, and the time of the lecturer is so valuable that prep time for teaching is always going to be minimal. In these cases, lecturing is justifiable, but they are vanishingly rare. If there is a textbook then lecturing is pointless at best and probably harmful.
  - adamnemecek 8y ago
    Sure however this isn’t how the system is set up.
    - anonymous5133 8y ago
      We can change the system, or replace it with something better.
      - randomdata 8y ago
        Can we? We've built the system to replace it have seen it transition into widespread use. However, it turns out that there are strong emotional ties to the old system and few want to let it go.
- davidmurdoch 8y ago
  Honest question here: are textbooks not expensive anymore? Circa 2003 I'd pay ~$600/semester for course textbooks.
conistonwater 8y ago
Lectures are a notoriously inefficient method of teaching, though, so you probably aren't comparing "merely" listening vs reading. One simple way to introduce a difference is if you're just passively listening to a lecture vs actively studying material when reading (conventional theory says the latter is better, because of it being active, IIUC). You might have decent study skills of your own. Learning styles are a surprisingly specific idea (i.e., it refers to specific differences between people and makes specific predictions about how well they'd do when learning in specific ways, which is what doesn't turn out to exist), so you could totally have learning styles turn out to be bunk, yet have plenty to say about different teaching methods. Education research literature is full of stuff by people trying different things, that's where inverted classrooms came from, but that's not anything to do with learning styles.
- mamon 8y ago
  Lectures as a form of teaching made sense at the time when they were first introduced: the Middle Ages. That was before printing press was invented, books were rare and expensive items so the students would gather in a big hall and the professor would read the book aloud, which for most students would be the only chance in their life to learn from it. Now that we have invented not only the print, but also computers, ebook readers, tablets, the lectures as a form of teaching are complete waste of time - trading them for more classroom/lab time is the way to go.
  - faceplanted 8y ago
    You're forgetting the most important selling point of lectures: Anyone can give them with little to no preparation if they know the material. Lectures are basically the "default" teaching method, you take something you already know and explain it piece by piece. putting knowledge down in any form of media is almost inherently harder and more expensive than just explaining it in person or on camera. Back in university, every time I had to find an explanation for something online on YouTube, recorded lectures were usually the worst choice, if I had a choice, because there was often no produced video explaining something, but there were always lectures recorded from somewhere. Because lectures are easy. I did actually find one place where lectures were better than directly reading the material, and it was mathematics lectures, just because amount of symbols and obscure language that often goes into putting something mathematical down in text over just explaining it can be ridiculous to someone like me who has never managed to learn the latin and greek alphabets however many times I tried.
nol13 8y ago
Yup. I might read one section over a few times before moving on, and/or spend way less time in others. Reading I go at the pace I can digest it, not the pace of the lecturer.
anonymous5133 8y ago
I am working on an educational related project. Pretty much what I do is have traditional textbook type materials for students to read. I also have the same materials in a visual interactive type lecture that basically explains/shows how to do something followed by some sort of interactive exercise where the student can apply the previously taught materials. The interactive exercises also act as a way to teach material as well. By analyzing how the student interacts with the exercise I can determine how well they understand the lesson. Nothing is locked in. If students don't want to read the textbook then they don't have to. Likewise, if students don't want to listen to the lectures then they don't have to either they can skip to the exercises. After learning about 10 of these lessons that compose the chapter they can take a skills quiz to see how well they know the material. I intentionally make all the skill quizzes extra hard just to make sure students know the material before progressing to the next chapter. If you have ever used codecademy then it is very similar. The only difference is my project is focused on entire college courses. If you took MIT OCW and combined it with codecademy then that is basically what I am working on. I am combining the formal structure of a college course with the technological innovation seen in codecademy.

djajshgsjja 8y ago

Typical science reporting: “we couldn’t prove x causes y” becomes “we proved x does not cause y”.

sirclueless 8y ago
The reporter doesn't make any claims like that. The word "prove" or "proof" don't appear at all. Instead they say, "The findings do not support the learning styles concept," and "Student grade performance was not correlated in any meaningful way with their dominant learning style or with any learning style(s) they scored highly on." If there's a complaint to be had here, it's that the HN poster changed the word "did" to "do" in the headline while posting here.
- rectang 8y ago
  > the HN poster changed the word "did" to "do" in the headline Well spotted! That's a pretty misleading change.
  - dang 8y ago
    Probably because the 80 char limit kicked in. But we can squeeze in "did" by squeezing out "their".
    - empath75 8y ago
      Yeah I was 1 character over the limit.
    - forapurpose 8y ago
      Could someone add (2015) to the story linked below? It seems to have been overlooked, and the title is otherwise misleading about an alarming topic. Thanks. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17112746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17112746
      - dang 8y ago

adamnemecek 8y ago

Ok so what exactly is the universal learning style?

ta1357 8y ago
Doing, failing, reflection.
- baron816 8y ago
  Reflection is the main thing. Think about the topic at a later date, try to dig deeper, compare and contrast it against similar concepts, apply it to different scenarios, summarize it in your own words and write that down, teach it to another person, etc.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
The article gives some examples, motly experiential engagement. "Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand."

themodelplumber 8y ago

Here is the "learning styles" in question: > The acronym VARK stands for Visual, Aural, Read/write, and Kinesthetic sensory modalities that are used for learning information. Fleming and Mills (1992) suggested four modalities that seemed to reflect the experiences of the students and teachers. Although there is some overlap between them they are defined as follows. [For a detailed description of the initial construction and limitations of VARK, and for other works on learning styles, see the bibliography and the seminal article.] From: http://vark-learn.com/introduction-to-vark/the-vark-modalities/ http://vark-learn.com/introduction-to-vark/the-vark-modaliti... (I wish the writing/linking could be amended to "VARK learning styles" or even initial-caps "Learning Style," as there are differing theories on learning styles, and a lot of good learning styles theory is probably going to get babied with this bath water...)

2_listerine_pls 8y ago

No such thing as learning styles, it's a myth. https://qz.com/585143/the-concept-of-different-learning-styles-is-one-of-the-greatest-neuroscience-myths/ https://qz.com/585143/the-concept-of-different-learning-styl... > So how did a false belief become so widely-held? In his paper on the subject for Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Howard-Jones argues that it’s not a result of fraud, but of “uniformed interpretations of genuine scientific facts.” The assumption behind learning myths seems to be based on the scientific fact that different regions of the cortex have different roles in visual, auditory, and sensory processing, and so students should learn differently “according to which part of their brain works better.” However, writes Howard-Jones, “the brain’s interconnectivity makes such an assumption unsound.”

waynecochran 8y ago
I always thought it was counter productive to “pigeon hole” oneself as only able to learn one way. The whole “I’m a visual learner” becomes a self-fulfilling reinforced statement. Sort of like people who say they are not a “math person”... well if you think that way you certainly won’t be.
- rwnspace 8y ago
  I find it's much more effective to think of yourself as a secret agent, superhero or a magician. When you can catch a flying plane a bit of calculus is a small hurdle, when you can cast arcane, mystical spells, struggling with the borrow-checker in Rust is just a temporary setback.
  - thesz 8y ago
    I think that "secret agent" analogy is very deep. Secret agent must monitor what he is doing and the results of his actions and make his actions either the best possible (wash a dish in a best possible way) or most compatible with ways of others (put washed dish where other think it should belong). Deliberate practice grows here naturally. And this attitude extends everywhere, not just to programming and/or washing dishes.

excalibur 8y ago

> Other activities, such as using flash cards, were associated with poorer performance, perhaps because they were a sign of learning by rote rather than deeper learning. But that's remarkably similar to the way "Deep Learning" is typically achieved. Perhaps it's a bit of a misnomer.

ggm 8y ago
It's a complete misnomer. It's such a bad fit, it has to be marketing.

swoorup 8y ago

I found learning by history to be easier. For example if i want to understand certain thoery, it helps me by understanding its history, its origin and why it was needed. I think this is however too slow if you need to consume more amount of information.

coding123 8y ago

Curious thought process... we spend about 12-20 years of our life going at a specific pace to learning "stuff" in different categories. What if you were given a choice - Learn the stuff in a class in 12-20 years of wasted time OR just have a list of all the material you must know, along with sample questions (so you know you're learning the right material) and have a venue to turn in work (so you get feedback). But instead of spending 12-20 (or more) years, you are given the choice to do whatever pace you want. So in that sense, could really fast people basically "Doogie Howser" it and start a career by 15? And possibly a related question - instead of doing ANY higher learning activities, we push all that into vocations - basically if you want to be a rocket scientist you ... start being a rocket scientist intern, learn the trade by being a peon in the shops?

EGreg 8y ago
http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158
j45 8y ago
One issue is learning is largely prepared and delivered as a linear experience. Our paths in life, are not linear. What we learn, grow from, transfer skills through is not as pretty as a sequential grade or degree system. Employers care about hiring competencies - institutions try to call it holistic but there remains a poor signal to noise ratio in terms of transferable skills. The traditional 2,000 year old form of higher education is no longer able to keep up with the rate of change in society. Today by the time higher institutions prepare new learning material release, it's outdated.
mieseratte 8y ago
As someone who found their path earlier than most, and has a bit of the protestant work ethic I see the appeal. However, there's two problems to this that I can see: First, most folks do not know what they wish to be from a reasonably young age. For the longest time I thought I wanted to be a geologist, probably until about high school, despite having discovered computing at an early age. Funny enough, I never really recognized that I could turn programming into a career. To me it was just something fun that I did. Consider the trope of the college kid who goes to school to find themself, bounces around majors, and graduates late. I know some nations have success tracking students earlier, but that is usually around the high school timeframe at best. Part of early education is setting the foundation and teaching one how to learn. This reduces the amount of years available for "Doogie Howser" self-study down to only four or so, plus an additional three or four for higher learning. Second, even if someone "knows" what they want to do I think many don't necessarily have the drive and resilience for self-guided study and the associated struggle. Many need the structure, and "hand-holding" that comes with a normal classroom. Additionally, some see value in the "well rounded" model of education and so depending on what you want to be it may or may not make sense. Having been of the "I speak English, why study it" school of thought, well, I'm sure this "essay" and the comma atrocities therein speak for itself. Just imagine if I had spent even less time in an English course. If we wanted a more utilitarian society of technicians this would be a good idea, but there are many facets to education besides occupation.

daveguy 8y ago

I always felt that learning styles didn't really have an effect. But I have thought that multiple modalities does improve. Take notes, make flashcards, read, discuss, have others quiz you, etc. I wish they could have included that in the test. Use one modality for 1hr minutes vs 2 modalities for 30 minutes each. It may be just as weak/nonexistent as learning styles in general, but I would hypothesize that using multiple modalities will make a difference over using a single modality.

coldtea 8y ago

They might not have boosted their scores, but were they more comfortable and enjoyed the process more when it used a style that they preferred or not? Also, I find this is one of the cases that personal experience trumps all this "research". Much the same way people were told not to eat this and that (with research supporting all those dietary suggestions) and then those suggestions were found to be false.

fjsolwmv 8y ago
Having fun is different from learning. If fun learning is ineffective, it's not good learning.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Having fun is different from learning. Yes, you can have fun without learning (e.g. at a strip club -- at least without learning something academic that is), and you can learn without having fun. However you can't learn if you're bored out of your mind and tuned out, and having some fun in your learning helps with that.

j45 8y ago

What a refreshing read. This pattern of long-standing beliefs that education academics don't really seem to question seems real as ever. - Academics need as much if not more support as the students they aim to help when it comes to remembering how to learn, and teach, especially with the use of technology. The old saying help yourself before helping others... - The academic education/edtech world seems full of more academic talking heads that are far removed from both teaching, and learning, but not one's credentials. - As a technologist hanging out in Education again.. this appears quite commonly when education academics speak about technology - too many of whom don't understand what technology is capable of, because society has passed most of them by in the baseline technological competency. The results appear to be speaking about things like pedagogy. Pedagogy is how children learn, but academics will talk about Pedgagogies when it comes to adult learning strategies. There's some slightly ostracized academics who are telling it how it is... most in academia won't say much because they don't want their jobs to be threatened. It's truly a sad situation where the instructional industry is concerned more about self preservation than perhaps participating in the lifelong learning themselves that is often preached to their students.

fjsolwmv 8y ago
I have some connections to schools, and "learning styles" is not a major concept at all. "Teaching modalities" (lecture, reading, labs) seems similar at a glance, but it's quite different. It's not that each person has a preferred modality, it's that different modalities have different benefits in a relative non-student-specific way. It's a weird contrarisn fad on HN to constantly rehash old debunkings of research no one in the real world cares about.
- j45 8y ago
  Nice. By schools, I'm presuming you meant K-12 in the US. My comment is about the post-secondary academic research community focused on education (particularly in North America, and more so in Canada).. Modalities, pedagogies, all are drawing away from the experience that the students are not getting that they should. US post-secondaries are starting to innovate, still good pockets of activity are not making a suit. Happy to chat offline, have been a technologist in delivering digital education (K-12, Post-secondary and corporate) for a while.

rectang 8y ago

I don't have a strong opinion about learning styles. However, and I think this is related, I have strong negative reaction when names in code are not easily pronounceable. Good: "regex", "func". Bad: "regexp", "fn". This is because I hear code aloud in my head when I read it, and if I don't know how to pronounce something it interrupts my reading momentum until I figure out some way to say it. Naturally I suppress my reaction because it's just a coding style thing and not worth arguing about with colleagues and collaborators. But it is definitely a strong enough effect that if other people had my tendency we would never get a keyword like 'fn', at least from other native English speakers. The explanation I've tended to believe is that other people perceive code more visually and less audially than I do.

stordoff 8y ago
I'm largely of the opposite group. Having names that aren't pronounceable helps me read code faster, as I don't try to pronounce it, and can just treat the entire word as a unit rather trying to "read" it. I do the same in English when reading fast. I distinctly remember reading "Hermione" in Harry Potter as a child, and, because it was a name I hadn't encountered before, just "reading over" it and not thinking about the actual pronunciation. I didn't think about the actual pronunciation until some years later (probably when it was brought up in the books). Even now, if I try to pay attention to my internal monologue whilst reading, it's often words running into each other or being skipped, unless I deliberately slow down, because I'm not actively subvocalising and I'm reading faster than I would pronounce them.
- rectang 8y ago
  That makes sense. Then the question in the context of "learning styles" is, if these differences are real, are they actionable -- can we produce measurable differences in outcomes?
- itronitron 8y ago
  that reminds me of reading Huckleberry Finn and having no idea what Jim was referring to when he used the word 'chile' until I actually sounded it out and then everything Jim was saying made sense

a_bonobo 8y ago

If anyone is interested in the scientific literature on learning, Greg Wilson has been writing a book based on Software Carpentry materials on how to teach programming, which cites a lot of the scientific literature, it's free here: http://third-bit.com/teaching/ http://third-bit.com/teaching/

tgb 8y ago

Isn't this surprising to a huge extent? My gut tells me that it's not that people don't have different learning styles, it's instead a combination of (A) the learning styles not being as obvious as the ones studied here and (B) we aren't exploiting those learning styles effectively. Is it really plausible that all humans learn in exactly the same way? I recall the Feynman story about realizing that some people see the numbers as they count and others hear the numbers. This was tested by having people do either visual or auditory tasks while counting the seconds. People who "saw" the numbers were less consistent counting to 30 seconds when doing something visual at the same time and vice versa for those who heard. How is it plausible that these two groups of people learn to do arithmetic in the same way? How many other little differences are there between people's brains that we don't notice? Maybe we're just terrible at noticing and using the differences that exist.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
First and foremost this is just another social sciences study. Most of everybody is aware of the reproducibility crisis yet seem to fail to connect the dots to new studies - it's not going anywhere which means that science, particularly in the social and physiological sciences, is somehow deeply flawed. That said, this study confirms my own biases so I want to believe. One big reason is to consider the academic output of schools in places such as Korea and China. Learning is extremely structured and more analogous to a factory line than a school, in the US style, and their output absolutely dwarfs ours. The typical argument against this system is that mechanical teaching leads to mechanical thought, which is is supposed to support things such as the fact that China has an abysmal rate of Nobel laureates. However, something missing there is that Nobel Prizes are frequently rewarded long after something is first done when its relevance is proven or otherwise becomes more clear. For instance Stephen Hawking never received a Nobel prize, yet if we observed Hawking Radiation - he likely would have been awarded one for a theoretic hypothesis dating back to 1974. The point there is that as recently as the 1950s Chinese were starving to death by tens of millions and they had little to no academic culture to speak of. Their riveting success is a very much a new thing and so the lack of Nobel standard achievements is something that's not [yet] a reasonable indication of much.

sometimesijust 8y ago

The design of this experiment is terrible. At best it proves that the VARK questionnaire does not correlate with actual learning style but I don't even think it even does that due to the poor experimental design. Perhaps it is leaning heavily on previous findings but since the population selection is so heavily biased to begin with and the course appears to be conventionally taught rather than making equally comprehensive study aides for the different styles. The fact that more than half of the students did not study using the style they self reported to prefer with is also an obvious red flag. Note I believe VARK is over simplified nonsense but so is this research.

jpster 8y ago

FTA > Also, while most students (67 per cent) actually failed to study in a way consistent with their supposedly preferred learning style, those who did study in line with their dominant style did not achieve a better grade in their anatomy class than those who didn’t. Isn't this self-selection? Introducing sampling bias?

himom 8y ago

This reminds me of the unproven teaching fads pushed into public schools in the late ‘70’s and ‘80’s, which causes some educators to leave and start their own private schools which used proven teaching approaches like phonics.

walshemj 8y ago
Well phonics was also considered a fad and the optician that diagnosed my dyslexia asked if I had been taught using phonic's as that was though to have worse outcomes for Dyslexics (neurodiverse) students.

supreme_sublime 8y ago

I like seeing people applying science to education. Something I didn't know about until recently is there has been a lot of study done on the other side of the equation; instructional styles. It seems "direct instruction" is by far the leader in terms of outcomes. [0] I'm curious how well known this is and if I was just ignorant. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd_9rszR27s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd_9rszR27s

nurettin 8y ago

I think we choose learning styles just as we choose a lifestyle, a political party, sports team or candidate, or favorite color. It is only meaningful to us. We get discouraged from using, say, visual memory, because it is hard at that moment. But in a proper learning environment based on encouragement, you get over that easily.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago

Certainly we all have preferences. Never mind whether they work better; folks will resist learning the 'wrong way'. So its still something to attend to when teaching.