Learning Styles

There are more than 70 learning style inventories available in the psychology literature and even some questionnaires that track learning style on the Internet. There is, however, disagreement concerning whether or not we should use preferred learning styles in designing training, including work-related training.

Some of the recent research says that although we do have preferred learning styles, there is no evidence that receiving instruction in that preferred style allows us to learn any better than receiving instruction in another style. Others argue, though, that there is evidence that we learn better using individual preferred learning styles, if for no other reason than we are more comfortable with our preferred style. Despite the disagreement, it pays us to at least understand the issue of individual learning styles because there is no evidence that training using preferred learning styles harm the learning environment, and using individual preferred learning style may even help the trainee learn better.

HRM training and development experts might want to continue to review this research over the next several years to see how it ultimately affects learning. One of the common learning style inventories provides three primary learner options. These three options are visual, auditory, and tactile learning.

As you would think, visual learners prefer to have material provided in a visual format such as graphs and charts. Auditory learners, on the other hand, generally prefer to learn information based on hearing that information. Finally, tactile learners prefer to learn by doing. Tactile learners want to physically perform a task in order to learn.