ARTICLE 10

LEARNING STYLES IN THE DIGITAL TEACHING/LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

The importance of different learning styles has for many years been a central theme in pedagogical-didactic approaches, both in terms of teaching adults, children and young people. The theory and the concept of learning styles and their impact on learning value is initially developed and explored by the American scientists Rita Dunn and Kenneth Dunn, dating back to the 1970s. The general approach of Dunn & Dunn was that everyone has an individual way of learning. Furthermore, the individual learning is optimized when the learning environment is able to respond to the individual learning style. As a consequence, some learning environments may be designed in a way that – in a manner of speaking – frustrates the learning process for some people. When being totally ignored, differences in learning styles may in some cases appear as “noise on the transmitter”, thus disturbing and reducing the learning value for some learners, regardless of age, gender, ethnic origins, socioeconomic and sociocultural background etc.

The Dunn & Dunn’s model of learning styles is probably widely known in educational contexts, whether or not the model is used in practice. According to the model, many different elements and stimuli may influence the learners´ learning process such as:

• The environmental elements and the effect of conditions such as light and other physical equipment of the classroom
• The emotional elements and learners´ motivational and structural approach to the learning process itself
• The social elements and the learners´ preferences for working alone or in groups etc
• The physiological elements and learners´ sensory and perceptive learning potentials such as auditive, visual, tactile or kinesthetic preferences
• The psychological elements and learners´ individual approaches to the learning process such as analytical or impulsive preferences etc.

As digital teaching and educational methodologies gains ground, there is reason to ask how different learning styles can be accommodated within digital learning processes. In the AiDKiT project, we have a particular focus on how you as a teacher support the learners’ learning motivation in the digital learning space as part of the emotional elements.

Furthermore, it is worth noticing that we have put together a curriculum of digital tools, each of which represents both visual and auditive learning approaches as part of the physiological elements, for instance the use of videos and pictures by involving flashcards  etc. However, the use of  audio also seems to be quite helpful in keeping the learners actively engaged in the learning processes. Audio in particular has a positive impact, when combined with text and pictures, because the auditive approach enables learners to use both eyes and ears in conjunction.

For language teachers, for example, it is important to be aware of this interplay between the auditive and visual learning elements. Flashcards are a good example. In several versions, flashcards consist exclusively of a picture page and a text, for example names of animals, food etc. In such editions, flashcards are a support for expanding the vocabulary itself in the acquisition of a new language. But language learning is just as much about pronunciation, and thus, the possibility of using flashcards with associated sounds plays a basic role. The practical use of vocabulary in a new language goes closely hand in hand with knowledge of the language’s sounds and pronunciation rules. Therefore, tools that contain both the auditive and visual approach are important pedagogical-didactic elements, both in digitally based and face-to-face based language teaching.

Teachers can stream lessons and exercises for learners to download as MP3 files. In the individual phase of a flipped learning programme, learners then can use the files for preparation whenever and wherever they prefer. For learners with spelling difficulties, speak-to-text tools can make communication easier and strengthen the learning motivation.