Alicia Lenard VARK Learning Style Assignment Career Success Strategies Professor Taylor November 2, 2013

Familiarity with learning styles is a key factor to success in any type of environment. Ignorance in this area can lead to mistakes, misunderstandings, and avoidable failures. Throughout my college history and work life, I have participated in various learning style assessments. My primary learning style has always been highlighted as visual but the VARK assessment didnt highlight this as my principal learning style. I enjoy and appreciate self assessments because they give me an opportunity to reflect upon my ever changing abilities, strengths and areas needing improvement. VARK Learning Style The VARK assessment stated that I am a kinesthetic learner with a secondary style of visual. The assessment had several questions that were difficult for me to answer because they only partially applied to me as did others so I felt as if I was guessing on some questions. Upon completion of the assessment and receiving my results; I was adamant that the assessment was incorrect. Only until I began researching the strategies for kinesthetic learners did I realize that I do posses both styles.

Study Strategies For my areas of need, I highlighted the strategies of the style that VARK listed me as well as the style that I have associated myself with. Kinesthetic learners can incorporate moving around, utilizing physical space as part of the learning platform, writing/mapping/diagramming, tying motions into recalling material and taking regular breaks into study rituals. Visual learners can

create posters, slideshows, develop graphs, utilize highlighters, underline and vary colors throughout study blocks to increase the chance of information comprehension and retention.

Important Elements Kinesthetic Input: Utilizes all senses, implements real life examples, prefers trial and error, references previous examples and likes solutions. SWOT: Remember real things that occurred and incorporates plenty of examples. Output: Write practice answers and role play scenarios prior to actual activity. Visual Input: Prefers presenters that utilize gestures and vivid language, utilizes diagrams, underlines, using various colors and highlights. SWOT: Redraw pages from memory, reconstruct images in various ways. Output: Practice turning visuals into words, draw things and use diagrams Conclusions All of the strategies listed above apply to my methods for information retention. I believe that I am multimodal verses one or the other. I have strong tendencies in both Kinesthetic and Visual areas. As a professional that wears various hats, this activity has brought the following to my attention: 1. As a presenter and coach I lean heavily on a kinesthetic approach. 2. As a student, my primary approach is visual.