Principle 7: Respect Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning

Good practice in undergraduate education respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

Introduction

Many roads lead to learning. Different students bring different talents and styles to college. Brilliant students in a seminar might be all thumbs in a lab or studio; students rich in hands-on experience may not do so well with theory. All students need opportunities to show their talents and learn in ways that work for them.

Many researchers, including Kolb, Felder-Silverman, and Herrmann, have proposed different learning style models over the years. Even the Myers-Briggs and Kiersey personality types have been linked to learning styles. However, the simplest, and most popular, learning style model identifies three types of learners: visual, auditory, and tactile. These models tend to focus on K-12 students; but Malcolm Knowles' theory of andragogy seeks to describe how adults learn. Whatever "flavor" of learning styles you prefer, it seems to be true that different people learn in different ways.

Adding to this mix of learning styles is evidence that there are different intelligences. Howard Gardner is one of the leading researchers in this field and he maintains that there are eight distinct "intelligences" in the population (he's announced two other candidates, but those have not yet been confirmed).

Gardner's intelligences are:

One of the most exciting aspects of teaching with technology is that it is so easy to work with students who learn in diverse ways or have diverse intelligences. In a traditional classroom, students are pretty much "stuck" studying the same way their peers study (and their professors teach). Technology, though, offers faculty and students more choices and they can use whatever learning style works best for them.

This page focuses on activities that may not be "business as usual" in your classroom, but will potentially appeal to a wider body of students.

Blog

A blog is nothing more than an online log or journal. This is a very popular communication medium and enables people to write notes, thoughts, opinions, or whatever and post those items online for others to read. In education, there would seem to be three uses for a blog:

  1. Student blogs. Students could write lab note, lecture notes, or other materials into a blog. This would be similar to having students write regular journal entries, but those would be posted online.
  2. Instructor blogs. Instructors could maintain a blog for their classes. This would be a great way to distill new research findings for students. Instructor blogs could also provide example writing for students to emulate; for example, an instructor may post book reports then have students also create a book report during the semester.
  3. Professional blogs. There are any number of great blogs available in all disciplines. Instructors could use those blogs for professional development; or a way to "keep up" with a rapidly changing profession.

Blog Tools

WordPress. This is a free blogging site that permits instructors to post a thought about some topic and then also permit students to respond to that topic. In this way, the blog is not strictly one-way communication; but a way to provide a feedback loop. Wordpress offers apps for both iPad and Droid along with a number of microblogger tools (submitting blog entries by cell phone).

Blogger. This is another free blogging site that instructors or students can use to start and maintain a blog. Blogger offers apps for both iPad and Droid along with a tool that permits posting blogs using text messaging.

Podcast

Podcasting is an audible file posted on the web that your students can download and listen to as they work, drive, exercise, or whatever. They are designed to be played on an MP3 player (like iPod). A podcast can be very simple (just lecture notes), or quite a production (with music, panels, telephone interviews, and other activities). Podcasts are fairly easy to create and will benefit those students who are dyslexic or prefer a more aural learning style.

Also, keep in mind that students can create podcasts for use in class. This would be an excellent way to engage students who have writing problems. Moreover, since a podcast is posted online (for the world to see), it encourages students to really polish their work and complements Practice Six, communicating high expectations.

Podcasting Tools

Podomatic. This site hosts your podcasts free of charge and it is easy to use. Just create your podcast and then upload it to the site. They also have an interesting service called "minicast" where you can upload photos, add an audio track, and let your friends play it back (even on mobile devices, like iPad).

Mindmapping

Mindmapping is a graphic, holistic way of thinking about a topic. People who draw mindmaps generally like to view a topic from a proverbial distance and organize their thoughts based on how the various components of the topic are related. What is important in a mindmap is not how some process works but, rather, how the various parts of a concept are linked together.

Mindmapping Tools

Mindomo. This is a free online tool that lets an individual or team brainstorm to create a mindmap for some project or topic.

Mindmeister. This is a mindmapping site that has both free and paid subscriptions; however, the free subscription is ad-supported. Mindmeister also has both iPad and Droid apps available, so mindmaps are accessible on the go.

Students with Disabilities

Students with disabilities are a large (and growing) population in colleges and universities. These students often require special accommodation in order to be successful; and are the very embodiment of "diverse ways of learning."

Audio materials must include a transcript so the hearing impaired can read the words being spoken. Video productions must be captioned in order to be accessible. While these steps are taken to accommodate students with disabilities, all students benefit from providing written or captioned materials. One student recalled that her science lecture was much clearer when she could read the captions while hearing the professor (those science words can be pretty tough to understand).

If visually impaired students are using a screen reader, like JAWS or Window Eyes, then written materials are normally accessible. However, there are a few things instructors can do to improve understanding of written documents. One of the most important is to always use the built-in headers to divide sections. With Microsoft Word, for example, use the built-in "Header" styles rather than just some bold-faced font to start a new section. Visually impaired students can skip to various sections of the document ("scan" the document) if it includes section headings. Also, authors must provide descriptive text for photographs, tables, and other visual information in the document.

To get a feel for how your web materials "look" to a student who is using a screen reader, instructors can use one of the free screen readers available with the Firefox browser. These readers are not nearly as good as JAWS or Window Eyes, but instructors can at least get some idea of what students will hear. Another option is to use lynx, a text-only browser. Sites opened with lynx will not include any fancy formatting, images, colors, or other visual queues. Instead, instructors will only see the text and links and it will not take long to appreciate how a screen reader would render your page (and visually impaired students will "see" the page).

For students with mobility impairments, Dragon NaturallySpeaking can help in typing papers. This is not a free product, but is well worth its cost. There are three versions of this program, but the speech rendering engine is the same in all of them; so choose the least expensive version available. Special needs students will like having this tool available.

Tools to Aid in Understanding Disabilities

Vischeck. On this site, visitors can enter a URL into a form and then "see" the page as a person with color blindness would see the page. The site also includes a lot of information about color blindness and how it affects people's lives. It is a fascinating site and can help a designer make images, pages, and other materials as visible as possible to all students.

Tools to Assist Students with Disabilities

National Center for Accessible Media: Tools and Guidelines. This site provides links to a number of valuable software, standards, and other materials to help with accessibility. This is a great place to start if you are just learning about accessible media.

Automatic Sync. This company produces a caption timing file for a video so students can see the captions as the movie plays. This service is not free, but is reasonably priced.

Universal Design

Universal design has been used for more than ten years, though it seems to be getting a great boost in popularity. It basically means that buildings, busses, sidewalks, and other public spaces must be designed to meet the needs of all people; which led to the inclusion of ramps at entries and other similar accommodations. For web sites, universal design means creating a site that is fully accessible by all visitors. You can read about universal design for webs at many sites, but two of the best are the World Wide Web Consortium site (they are the standards-making body) and the University of Washington.

Universal Design Tools

FireFox Accessibility Addon. (There is no link to this since it is an addon for the FireFox browser and must be installed within that environment.) This toolbar includes an incredible array of tools that help a designer create fully accessible pages.

Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE). This is an online service that will evaluate a web page (or an entire site) and return a report about potential functional issues.

TAW3. This site permits instructors to check a single page by entering its URL; but there is also a free, downloadable version that designers can use to check an entire site before it is uploaded.