Dr David Kolb is well known for his Learning Styles Inventory. Kolb says there are straight choices between watching and doing, and feeling and thinking, and that these define our personal learning preferences. It is the combination of these choices that produces our preferred learning style and Kolb’s four learning styles.
How can these styles facilitate learning in your studies?
Diverging (feeling and watching)
Divergers are people who can look at things from different perspectives. They prefer to watch rather than do and are good at gathering information and using imagination to solve problems. As a diverger, your strength will be viewing concrete situations from different viewpoints. You will respond well to brainstorming, collaborating and giving and receiving feedback. You’ll also do well if you participate in classroom studies, or join a study group or internet discussion forum with other students. Develop your thinking and doing skills by organising information; analysing quantitative data and working on decision making skills.
Assimilating (watching and thinking)
People in this category will favour a concise, logical approach, and see ideas and concepts as more important than people. If this is your learning style, you’ll respond best to clear explanations, because you need to know and understand before you take action. Your strength is in understanding a wide range of information and organising it into logical formats. You’ll respond best to lectures, exploring analytical models and giving yourself time to think things through. You might also want to develop your soft skills - getting more involved with others, and practising influencing and leading others.
Converging (doing and thinking)
If this is your learning style, you will be able to solve problems and use your learning to find solutions to practical issues. You may prefer technical tasks and be less concerned with people and interpersonal aspects of a job. Your strength is finding practical uses for ideas and theories. You’re good at problem solving and making decisions. Look for opportunities to experiment with new ideas, use simulations and work with practical applications. You may need to develop your watching and feeling skills.
Accommodating (doing and feeling)
You’re a hands on person who relies on intuition rather than logic. You prefer to take a practical, experiential approach. You will probably act on gut instinct rather than logical analysis. Your strengths are working with and motivating others and decision making. Watch out for your tendency to act in haste, though - a classroom based approach with lots of group work and opportunities to practice the application of theory would be good for you. You might do well to develop your watching and thinking skills – practise information gathering and approach situations with an open mind.
Test yourself
There are some very good websites with tests to help you identify your personal learning style. The best tell you how to use this information to help you study more effectively:
- Learning Styles Online has a free learning styles questionnaire which takes about ten minutes. It explains how you can use your personal analysis to develop a learning strategy.
- Business Balls has a variety of tests and quizzes linked to different learning theories including VAK and Kolb’s.
- Accelerated Learning has a quick and simple test and access to (paid for) products to help you make the best of your analysis.
Jackie Durham is an education and training consultant with CIMA. This article is contributed by CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) and it first appeared in Velocity, CIMA’s online bi-monthly magazine for its students.
