In any educational or training environment, one thing is apparent: learners are not equal. Some understand new concepts by watching; others think by listening; while others must physically interact with the learning. This is the rationale for the VAK learning model – Visual, Auditory, and Kinaesthetic – as it provides information about how people learn and how they will retain information.

The Visual Learner – Picture Thinkers

Visual learners learn best by using images, spatial understanding, and visual representation. Visual learners seek out materials to engage with such as charts, graphs, diagrams, videos and pictures.

They will often:

• Remember faces rather than names,
• Prefer reading instructions rather than listening to instructions
• Organize their ideas with color-coding or mind-mapping.

Educators can support visual learners by creating presentations that are multimedia related, making use of flowcharts, and structuring students’ notes visually. Most importantly, simple visual imagery can also make a major difference. For instance, timelines and even flashcards can be extremely powerful.

The Auditory Learner: Learning Through Sound

Auditory learners excel at learning through speech or sound. They learn best when information is provided in an auditory format, including lectures, podcasts, debate, group discussion, or even music. Auditory learners better connect to new material when they listen to it, or talk about it.

Auditory learners are likely to:

• Enjoy group discussions verbally and verbal instructions
• Learn better when they read aloud or repeat facts for memorization
• Be good storytellers & remember information that is spoken

Auditory learners can benefit from verbal repetition, audio clips, or having class-led collaborative discussions to support content understanding. If possible, auditory learners should also record the class lesson or engage in verbal discussions with their peers to best support their learning preference.

The Kinaesthetic Learner: Learning Through Doing Hands-On Experience

Kinaesthetic learners must touch, do and move to learn. Kinaesthetic learning works best when a learner can physically touch and engage with the content through real-world experiments and simulations, or on some level of activity.

Typical characteristics of kinaesthetic learners are:

• Preference for hands-on tasks, experiments, role-plays or something tangible
• Sitting still in one place is hard for long periods of time
• Learning better through trial-and-error, or physical engagement

The focus for kinaesthetic learners can vary but educators should find ways to play off these characteristics through learning stations, props, models, and allow the students to act out the concepts.

Kinaesthetic learning is initiated through movement, whether that’s working, building, playing, drawing, or using physical gestures; movement in some way will help kinaesthetic learners grow in understanding.

Learning Style Beyond Categories: Blended Learning Styles

The VAK model can clarify learning preferences based on visual, auditory, or kinaesthetic modes. However, it is important to remember that most learners are multimodal, and will typically use more than one learning style depending upon the context.

For example, they might watch a video (visual), talk about it (auditory), and do an activity (kinaesthetic) in order to achieve a full understanding of a concept.

For this reason, the best learning environments utilize blended (and merging) methods of learning to provide a range of options to engage with the content so all learners can find something that engages.

Empowering Learners Through Awareness

Understanding learning styles is not about labelling students, but about empowering them. Once learners know how they learn best, they will feel more confident and be able to take control of their own learning. Just as it allows parents and educators to better fulfil the necessary requirement of making classrooms inclusive and interactive, when educators teach with these styles in mind, they can be included, interactive and impactful.

We live in a world in which personalization is quickly becoming the standard; whether it be in advertising, healthcare, or another area of our lives, personalization is the path forward. Learning for better outcomes may simply be informed by the realization that how we learn is as important a consideration as what we learn.