From strategy to style
In a paper published on the Web, M. David Merrill at Utah State University has this to say about the relative importance of learning style in determining an appropriate instructional strategy for a given instructional goal:
“There are known instructional strategies. The acquisition of different types of knowledge and skill require different conditions for learning (Gagné, 1985). If an instructional experience or environment does not include the instructional strategies required for the acquisition of the desired knowledge or skill, then effective, efficient, and appealing learning of the desired outcome will not occur.”
He goes on: “An examination of much of the available training material demonstrates that much of our current training materials include instructional strategies that are inconsistent with the goals of the instruction. Inconsistent instruction is ineffective instruction regardless of learner style.” (“Instructional Strategies and Learning Styles: Which takes Precedence?” Found May 1, 2004 at http://www.id2.usu.edu/Papers/5LearningStyles.PDF) (Editor's Note: As of February 22, 2010, this article appears to have been removed from the Web.)
In a previous article (“Storyboards Tailored to You: Do-It-Yourself Magic Arrows,” in Learning Solutions Magazine , May 3, 2004), I outlined the first steps of the instructional design and development process (See Figure 4).
FIGURE 4 The instructional design process leading up to development of content and materials includes making an accommodation for learning styles while planning the learning progression and laying out the flowchart.
Making provisions to adjust the delivery of instruction to the learner’s style is an important element in the last steps of design. Specifically, planning the provisions takes place during development of the learning progression and the flowchart. There are four steps involved in connecting an e-Learning design to learner style, beginning with the large instructional goal or content to be delivered through e-Learning. (See Figure 5.) Ruth Clark has identified many of the details of these steps, and I will summarize them very briefly here along with references to Dr. Clark’s work and the work of others.
FIGURE 5 Successful use of learning style information is the result of a progressive design process, with adaptation to learning style as the final step.
Content types
At the point where the performance approximation and the learning objectives are identified, it is possible to classify the type of content that is involved for each of the objectives, and the level of performance the learner will be required to demonstrate. Based on M. David Merrill’s taxonomy (The Content-Performance Matrix), Ruth Clark characterizes the basic content types in her book Developing Technical Training. These are:
- Fact
- Concept
- Process
- Procedure
- Principle
Each of these content types (except Fact) can be taught to either the “Remember” level (the learner simply recalls or recognizes the content exactly as it was presented) or the “Application” level (the learner applies the information the way it will be used on the job). Fact can only be taught to the “Remember” level.
Identifying the nature of the content, and the level to which the learner must perform, is the key to identifying the most appropriate instructional strategy.
Instructional strategy
There is, for each content type at each level of performance, an instructional strategy that researchers have found works best. The best strategy depends on the content or goal, not on the learner’s style or preferred mode of learning. Clark provides detailed outlines and the fundamental components of these strategies as they can be applied to reference materials, to classroom instruction, and to e-Learning.
Some of the strategies are very simple and direct; for example, the strategy for teaching a procedure is to get the learner to the application level quickly. Provide follow-along demonstrations and exercises that require the learner to actually perform the procedure. On the other hand, the strategies for teaching processes and principles are more involved and require the learner to solve a problem and make an inference.
Instructional architecture
Depending on the content type, and somewhat on the instructional strategy, the designer has a choice of instructional architectures, or instructional styles that will affect the e-Learning design. It is at this point that design begins to strongly interact with learning style.
Clark identifies four basic architectures:
- Receptive: The goal is information acquisition — to inform the learner. The learner gets lots of information, and not much of an opportunity to practice.
- Directive: The goal is to build and strengthen the learner’s response — to teach a procedure, usually. The learner responds to a tutorial, receives feedback, and repeats the cycle until the response meets the criterion the designer has specified.
- Guided discovery: The goal is to help the learner apply principles. The learner receives realistic problems and resources and solves the problems.
- Exploratory: The goal is to help the learner develop expertise. The learners have access to information, examples, demonstrations and exercises and can select the resources that best match their needs and models.
It is easy to see how the various learning styles will match some of these architectures more readily than they will match others. For example, the receptive and directive architectures might be more comfortable for learners with a converging style or those who would fall into the activist or pragmatist categories. On the other hand, assimilators and theorists would probably feel right at home with the level of detail provided in an exploratory architecture.
Does this mean that an activist has no hope of developing expertise through exploratory learning? No, but learners with styles mismatched to the architecture will need additional support if the skill being taught requires a particular architecture.
Learning model
e-Learning’s appeal, if not its effectiveness, is based in large part on flexible multimedia delivery of information. In e-Learning and the Science of Instruction, Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer point out the differences between the information delivery theory of multimedia and the cognitive theory of multimedia.
Instructional designers who adopt the VAK learning styles model often express the opinion that, in order to accommodate both visual and auditory learners, words should always be delivered in both spoken and printed form. This may be the result of a belief by the designers that learning happens because the learner receives information. Therefore, delivery of information through multiple routes is preferable to delivery through only one. This is the information delivery theory.
Clark and Mayer are proponents of the cognitive theory of multimedia. Cognitive processes — how memory works — affect learning. Concurrent cognitive activity, created by multiple streams of information, can easily overload working memory. For example, presenting animation on screen with text — all visual information — in a fast presentation is very likely to overload the working memory of learners who are not familiar with the content. This is a consequence of what Clark and Mayer call the Redundancy Principle, which Ruth Clark presented in “Six Principles of Effective e-Learning: What Works and Why” in the September 10, 2002 issue of Learning Solutions Magazine, along with information about exceptions to the Redundancy Principle.
There are other possible interactions between the VAK learning styles model and the cognitive theory of multimedia. Designers should be aware of these and take the cognitive theory into account. The research support for the cognitive theory and for the principles Clark and Mayer present is stronger than the research support for VAK learning styles, so careful consideration of the interactions would be a good idea.
Connecting to style
At this point, the design information for an e-Learning application will include:
- The instructional strategy and the fundamental components required by the content type;
- The instructional architecture, including decisions about the amount of guidance to be given for each of the objectives, the size of the steps in the design, and the amount of practice and feedback;
- The interactions between the learning style model chosen and the cognitive principles which apply to use of multimedia.
The next step for the designer is to decide how to implement an adaptive strategy that will adjust the delivery of the presentation components and options, and that will fine-tune the instructional style to be compatible with each individual learner. This sounds like a tall order, but it is a problem that designers have solved many times in the past. As long ago as 1988, David Jonassen published Instructional Designs for Microcomputer Courseware, in which he outlined adaptive strategies to adjust the difficulty of sample problems. Even though this work is dated in language and in some of the details, the adaptive strategies themselves are still valid and applicable to adjusting e-Learning to accommodate learning styles. Jonassen and Barbara L. Grabowski have also provided useful design guides for accommodating individual differences in a newer book, Handbook of Individual Differences, Learning, and Instruction. Both of these are available online through Amazon and other booksellers, and I recommend them to designers whether learning styles are a concern or not.
To allow an e-Learning application to adapt to an individual’s learning style, there are several options for the designer to consider. The designer can vary:
- The content. Some learners may skip or augment some topics, based on learning style. For example, activists may take a route around the theoretical content.
- The sequence. Some learning styles benefit from seeing the big picture first, while others need to move from the specific instances to a larger theory. There is no reason why everyone must take the same sequence.
- The amount of detail. Some learning styles require more detail, more examples, or more explanation than others in order to be effective. There is no reason why any learner should feel either overwhelmed by detail or under informed by the lack of examples.
- The instructional methods. Some learning styles will get more out of simulations than others. Other styles will learn more from case studies or from scenarios. By assessing learning styles and making the necessary adjustments in what each learner experiences, the use of different methods can be balanced.
Control of these options can be provided exclusively by the e-Learning application based on the designer’s decisions, exclusively by the learner’s choice, or through a combination of the two. Ruth Clark, in Developing Technical Training, suggests the third option, which she calls adaptive control: the options are managed by the computer, based on learner need. Learner need is established by the pattern of learner responses to questions or problems. The computer judges the responses and changes content, sequence, detail, or method — or offers the learner feedback, advice, and a choice.
Clark suggests that the designer consider some additional factors at this point. Consider what the learners already know. If they have a lot of experience, or if they will find it easy to learn the content or skill, give the learners more control over the content, sequence, level of detail, or the method. If the learners are less experienced, or if they will have trouble with the content, let the e-Learning application make the choices. Also consider whether the lessons depend on each other. If skills really need to be learned in a certain order, do not offer the option to change the sequence or to skip skills. Finally, if the learner will have to pass a criterion test (“go/no-go,” certification, pass/fail), give the learner the option for additional practice or alternative presentations, along with some advice from the program.
Conclusion
There are a number of issues relating to learning styles and e-Learning:
- Most of the learning styles studies done to date have involved traditional instructor-led delivery or distance learning based on written materials. There are few studies available to help guide the designer in applying learning style theory to e-Learning. As I have suggested, designers would do well to track what they have tried and how well it worked. It would also be a good idea to constantly read, look for newly-published research, and attend conference presentations, looking to benefit from the experience of others in applying learning styles to e-Learning.
- The validated versions of all the learning styles instruments are proprietary, and require payment of royalties or peruse fees every time a learner completes an instrument.
- The validated versions of the learning styles instruments are either print-only or available online only from the instrument owners; this means that actually getting the style information into a form that would be useful to an e-Learning application will most likely require human intervention — the information will not be available automatically to your LCMS or LMS. The web sites for the LSI and for the LSQ do not address the possibility of negotiating a license that would permit placing the online version onto your own server.
- There are many non-proprietary learning styles instruments available on the Web, but none of them have been validated or shown to be reliable, and many of them provide no information about the learning models on which they are based; this means you could have problems if you based adjustments to your e-Learning presentation on them.
Applying learning styles to e-Learning involves adding development time and cost. A purist might say that it is always worthwhile to do everything possible to maximize e-Learning effectiveness. Unfortunately, purists are almost never the ones writing the checks. A designer will always have to consider the tradeoffs and optimize for value.
It seems to me that a designer who would like to take learning styles into account has three basic options. These options are not necessarily mutually exclusive — more than one may apply to any given e-Learning program.
- Design the e-Learning application so that it applies the principles behind the Lewin model, taking the learner through all four stages of learning. Use short tests to check for progress at the end of each stage or at the end of each cycle. Either programmatically repeat individual stages or the complete cycle, or offer the learner the option to repeat a stage (e.g., to choose to repeat a simulation, to see the examples again or to see more examples, to review the conclusions the learner reached, or to repeat the practical application stage). This option would not require the explicit use of any learning style model or instrument, but the design could become quite complex.
- Have all members of the target population (or a statistically significant number of them) complete a learning style instrument and design the e-Learning application so that it matches the style of the majority. This could possibly be a solution if you suspect that your target population is going to be pretty homogeneous with respect to their learning style (all of them are members of a single profession, for example). There are at least two disadvantages with this approach. One is that there may be a significant minority of members who don’t “fit the pattern” and so will be mismatched. It could also be the case that the learning style instrument may turn out not to measure an important dimension (for example, if you used Kolb’s instrument but it turned out that most of your learners were strongly auditory in the way they like to receive information). Depending on the instrument and the license conditions, this could be an expensive option as well.
- Have those learners who are going to take the e-Learning complete a style instrument, and enter the results into a profile that would be available to the e-Learning application. The application would then adjust the presentation programmatically so that each learner received a presentation matched to his or her style. It would be a good idea to also offer learners some options that they control, since no instrument is going to be perfect in its assessment of style. Theoretically, this would provide the best possible match of presentation and learning style for each individual.
There are some practical issues. For example, getting all the learners to complete the instrument and report the results in a timely fashion could be a problem. There is also the question of what to do about the learners who don’t complete the instrument or report the results. In any case, getting the results entered into the profiles is a task that will need to be handled in the implementation planning. Finally, there may be some privacy issues — learning style may not be a hugely sensitive matter, but it is still someone’s personal information and it needs to be protected.
Because of the potentially negative interaction between sensory preferences and the need to avoid overloading the learner’s working memory, I recommend giving precedence to Clark and Mayer’s Modality, Redundancy, and Coherence Principles when applying any learning style model that involves visual, auditory, verbal, or kinesthetic adjustments to content.
Learning styles may be an important individual difference that will affect the results of your e-Learning applications. I have laid out some of what seem to me to be the leading theories in this area, and I have summarized some of the thinking of design experts that bears on use of these theories. I want to wish you well in applying these ideas to your designs, and to encourage you to write up your results and to share them with other practitioners. It’s really the way forward for all of us!
Reference
Clark, Ruth Colvin. Developing Technical Training: A Structured Approach for the Development of Classroom and Computer-Based Instructional Materials. Pearson Addison Wesley, 1989. ASIN 0201149672
Clark, Ruth Colvin and Mayer, Richard E. e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning. Josey- Bass/Pfeiffer, 2003. ISBN 0787960519.
Honey, Peter and Mumford, Alan. Using Your Learning Styles. Peter Honey Books, 1986. ISBN 0950844438.
Jonassen, David. Instructional Designs for Microcomputer Courseware. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988. ISBN 0805800867.
Jonassen, David A. and Grabowski, Barbara L. Handbook of Individual Differences, Learning, and Instruction. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993. ISBN 0805814132.
Kolb, David A. Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1984. ISBN 0132952610.
