Faculty Resources

Teaching Resources

Learning Styles

How do you learn best? When getting new information about something, do you prefer to:

• Read an article about it?
• Look at charts and pictures to get the idea?
• Listen to a lecture?
• Have a conversation?
• Take notes on the subject?
• Do a physically active project on it?

Obviously, someone learning to dance needs to dance, not listen to a lecture. Someone studying Bach needs to listen to his music. And a budding designer needs to look at examples of layouts. Certain tasks lend themselves to certain ways of learning.

Most Academy of Art University students think that they are visual graphic learners, but they most commonly turn out to be kinesthetic learners -- they need to be physically involved in some way. Yet most teachers fall back on the lecture mode of teaching all too easily. After 20 minutes of lecture, even the most auditory of learners can't take in what is being said.

While students need to be flexible in their own learning, you can vary classroom activities as much as possible so that each type of learner has something that he or she can tune in to.

For ideas about how to adapt activities to different types of learners, look at the Adapting Activities for Varied Learning Styles Chart.

To find out what kind of learner you are, take the Learning Styles Inventory.

NOTE: Students who are having trouble in a particular modality because of a disability need to be put in touch with the Classroom Services Office at the ARC. Do not make special adjustments for a student with a disability until you have received an official letter of accommodation from the Classroom Services Office.