Kinesthetic Learners: Why Old Media Should Never Die
As you may or may not know, I used to be a customer service trainer: I worked for a national telecommunications company until they were bought and our location closed in 2006. Working with adults is similar to working with children in some ways, and oh so very different in others. Not to mention that, as a 27 year old, it was sometimes hard to get a 50 year old trainee to take me seriously. It can be done, however, and I looked upon that as one of the interesting challenges of my job.
This company had a specific training course for its new trainers, and it has proven valuable to me both in and out of the classroom. It has helped me in meetings, interviews, and of course when teaching clients computer software or content management systems.
The two biggest things we dealt with in that class were personality types and learning styles. Learning styles are how you as a student best absorb information: are you visual, auditory, or kinestetic? Do you learn by seeing something, hearing something, or by associating the new information with a physical action?
It’s an easy trap to fall into the visual and auditory teaching environment. After all, that’s what so many of us remember from college, right? However, not only are you shutting out certain types of learners, you’re creating a boring learning environment for everyone.
Also, while the general population tends to be visual learners, that is certainly not the case for specific groups of people. Practicing lawyers, for example, tend to be auditory and kinesthetic learners. Makes sense when you think about what they do all day long, no? It also raises the interesting question of whether their learning style affected their job choice or vice versa, though that is a topic for another discussion.
As a trainer I took great care to involve my kinesthetic learners. We heavily emphasized hands-on use of the computer systems, we would make models of certain types of technology, and as a last resort I kept toys on the tables so they would have something to do with their hands during less hands-on activity.
Many classrooms, however, don’t offer this type of kinesthetic learning. The hands-on learner is left to fend for themselves and more often than not the only physical interaction they get is with the learning matieral itself.
You’ve seen them before. Sometimes, it’s a student whose fingers trace the words as they read them. Or the highlighter: the student who makes a colored mosaic of their text as they try to physically interact with the material. Even note-taking is a kinesthetic activity. In a variety of subtle ways, the kinesthetic learner can physically interact with their learning material.
Now, imagine these same students trying to physically interact with ‘new’ media. The method of consuming learning material is physically no different than consuming entertainment material. Your fingers and eyes make the same motions, there is no easy way to physically differentiate material, much less to physically interact with it.
Obviously, there are ways that new media can be superior. Video offers the best chance to reach all learning types. For example, a step-by-step video of a science experiment caters to visual and auditory senses while leaving the hands free to actually perform the experiment.
But for straight information consumption, new media leaves the kinesthetic learner out in the cold.
