When creating content and materials for the Learning Scientists website, we try to include many different types of forms (NOT because of Learning Styles, but because of preferences, and diversity in the type of media an individual can consume!). To that end, I’ve created blog versions of some bite-size research podcast episodes in the past, to switch the format, create some healthy repetition, and cater to different preferences.
Today’s blog post revisits a paper that Althea and I covered a few years ago in a podcast episode (Episode 49 Learning Styles and Dual Coding). It is a repeat, and specifically, we tend to repeat ourselves a lot when it comes to learning styles and dual coding. However, repetition, especially after time has passed, helps with learning (though this is much longer than we would normally recommend!). And, learning styles is a pervasive theory. As long as companies are out there trying to sell learning styles assessments and students show up in our classes claiming to have been labeled as kinesthetic, auditory, visual, or verbal learners, we’ll keep writing about it!
We really like this paper because the authors, Josh Cuevas and Bryan Dawson, compare learning styles and dual coding directly. On the surface the two are really similar. But, if you’ve been following our work for a while and/or engage with the literature, you know that the two are not the same and do not have the same learning outcomes.
