White Paper on Learning Styles

After reading the VTLC's white paper on Learning Styles, consider the following questions:


Questions for Reflection

• What ways of thinking are required by your discipline?
• What modes of instruction do you most often use?  What is the relationship between the way you teach and the ways of thinking required by your discipline?
• How do you gauge your students' learning preferences? What role do they or should they have in your teaching?

Reflecting on Podcast with Dr. Bill Cerbin

Greetings VTLCers,

I hope you enjoyed listening to Drs. Nancy Chick and Bill Cerbin discuss learning styles.

Here are a few questions for your consideration:

• Dr. Cerbin mentions several misconceptions about "learning styles," ultimately concluding that "learning styles" as we often think of them, do not exist:  Do you agree?  What have you found in your own teaching and learning that supports or undermines this?  
• At about the 24-minute mark, Nancy summarized a useful response to misconceptions about learning styles as "thinking less about student's learning styles and thinking more about the ways of thinking that are required by my subject."  What kinds of thinking are required by your subject?  What are the most effective ways to teach students to think in these ways?
• Dr. Cerbin offers a few practices that enhance student learning: "free recall retrieval practice: "expressive writing" and "solution analysis."  How might you use one or all of these in your courses?
• To paraphrase Dr. Cerbin's question in the podcast, what makes your field difficult for someone who doesn't know about it? 
• What background knowledge do students need as a "framework" for your course? 

Feel free to reflect on your own or leave comments below.

UWC VTLC Podcast 3: A Conversation on Learning Styles with Dr. Bill Cerbin

Greetings colleagues and VTLCers,

Welcome to the second UWC VTLC podcast of the 2011-12 academic year, a conversation on learning styles between Dr. Bill Cerbin, Professor of Psychology at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, where he has taught for more than 20 years, and between our inaugural director, Dr. Nancy Chick, who is now the Assistant Director at Vanderbilt University's Center for Teaching. Dr. Cerbin also directs the UW-La Crosse Center for Advancing Teaching & Learning, which sponsors programs and activities to support teaching and learning. Active in the scholarship of teaching and learning, he has twice been a Carnegie Scholar with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. His work focuses on understanding the relationship between teaching and college student learning and thinking.       

You can listen on your computer by clicking here or always on the title above, or you can subscribe via iTunes and listen there or on your MP3 player.  See here for more details on subscriptions.