What Learning Styles Benefit From the Online Learning Environment

The current education system has more options than ever for students to tailor their study experience and one is choosing online or face-to-face learning. Different learning styles thrive in different environments, and understanding the difference between the two is important to ensure you thrive in your chosen field. Whether you wish to study a masters online or are simply looking to supplement your career with a short course, this article will explore what learning styles are best for each scenario.

Learning Styles Thriving in Online Environments

The pandemic has helped push almost every institution to deliver online but before we jump into an online course we recommend analysing your strengths to see if this mode of delivery is suitable for you.

Visual Learners

Visual learners are probably the best suited to online environments since the user interfaces developed for online courses have a very visual element. The availability of videos, dynamic visuals and attractive interfaces make visual learning integral in the new world of education. These kinds of learners will have no problem adapting to online delivery and will most likely thrive in these intensely visual environments.

If you’re a visual learner and you want to enhance or develop your online experience you need to ensure that you seek schools with an intense focus on visual resources but also spend some time contributing and collaborating in other ways so you have an element of balance. Another way to take advantage as a visual learner is to leverage note-taking software that is more visual as well as other organisational utilities.

Auditory Learners

Auditory learners are those who focus the most on listening and audio to intake information, they usually learn best through watching lectures or listening to audiobooks or podcasts. If this is you then you have a rather versatile learning style as most courses are delivered through speaking and audio, making your journey rather malleable. While there are multiple ways you can engage in your learning experience you should spend some time deciding what is best for you, as discussions, webinars, virtual classrooms or even pre-recorded lectures provide different learning experiences. 

These types of learners thrive in online environments due to the sheer variety of audio delivery options available when switching to online learning. It means you can tailor your experience whether your focus is on things such as text-to-speech reading, live lectures, podcasts and more. Auditory learning is one of the best kinds of learners for the online environment and if this is you then it's definitely worth considering online study for your next course.

Read/Write Learners

While this might feel a little old school with video and audio being more prevalent in today's learning environment, nothing beats reading and writing for information consumption. No matter how many courses may be delivered through video or audio, there will always be a wealth of resources in written format for those adept in this medium. Using digital resources such as websites, eBooks, interactive texts and virtual libraries there are heaps of supportive tools for these kinds of learners. 

The best thing about this style of learning is that it is at your own pace, you’re not reliant on the speed of a video to consume information and it's much easier to locate specific parts of information when scouring books. Some additional unconventional ways that read or write learners can develop their education is through note-taking software, eBook or Kindle apps and even just hard copy books to keep on hand during their online classes. 

Learning Styles Suited for Classroom Environments 

Now that we’ve looked at the learning styles that benefit it's also good to understand the learning styles we’ve missed out on during the course of this blog post. This is because some are more suited to online environments than others and some career paths might cater for a completely different approach altogether. 

Learners that thrive on hands-on experience, social interaction and live verbal conversations might struggle during online classroom activities but as technology develops it should offer solutions to these learning styles. Through video conferencing applications such as Zoom, we can already interact almost exactly like we do in classroom environments but it is still that physical separation that may cause some students to be disengaged. This is why it is vital to still offer both options for those that may not have the luxury of being visual, auditory or reading/writing learners.

Summary

The option to study online has opened many doors for students to fit in a study into their schedule but it's important to be sure that we can manage this style of learning before enrolling. If we can understand our individual preferences, skills and tendencies we can further tailor our learning experience and leverage digital resources to get the best results. Those that do this successfully will unlock their full potential for a rich and engaging educational journey.