Learning and Teaching Styles - Sequential and Global Learners
With permission from Felder, R.M., and Silverman, L.K. (1988). Learning and Teaching Styles in Engineering Education. Engr. Education, 78(7), 674-681.
http://www.ncsu.edu/effective_teaching
Most formal education involves the presentation of material in a logically ordered progression, with the pace of learning dictated by the clock and the calendar. When a body of material has been cornered the students are tested on their mastery and then move to the next stage.
Some students are comfortable with this system; they learn sequentially, mastering the material more or less as it is presented. Others, however, cannot learn in this manner. They learn in fits and starts; they may be lost for days or weeks, unable to solve even the simplest problems or show the most rudimentary understanding, until suddenly they “Get it” – the light bulb flashes, the jigsaw puzzle comes together. They may then understand the material well enough so they apply it to problems that leaves most of the sequential learners baffled. These are the global learners.
Sequential learners follow linear reasoning processing when solving problems; global learners make intuitive leaps and may be unable to explain how they came up with solutions. Sequential learners can work with material when they understand it partially or superficially, while global learners may have great difficulty doing so. Sequential learners may be strong in convergent thinking and analysis; global learners may be better at divergent thinking and synthesis. Sequential learners learn best when material is presented in a steady progression of complexity and difficulty; global learners sometimes do better by jumping directly to more complex and difficult material.
School is often a difficult experience for global learners. Since they do not learn in a steady or predictable manner they tend to feel out-of-step with their fellow students and incapable of meeting the expectations of their teachers. They may feel stupid when they are struggling to master material with which most of their contemporaries seem to have little trouble. Some eventually become discouraged with education and drop out. However, global learners are the last students who should be lost to higher education and society. They are the synthesizers, the multidisciplinary researchers, the systems thinkers, the ones who see the connections no one else sees. They can be truly outstanding engineers – fi they survive the educational process.
How to teach global learners; Everything required to meet the needs of sequential learners is already being done from first grade through graduate school; curricula are sequential, course syllabi are sequential, textbooks are sequential, and most teachers teach sequentially. To reach the global learners in a class, the instructor should provide the big picture or goal of a lesson before presenting the steps, doing as much as possible to establish the context and relevance of the subject matter and to relate it to the students’ experience. Applications and “what if’s” should be liberally furnished., The students should be given the freedom to devise their own methods of solving problems rather than being forced to adopt the professor’s strategy, and they should be exposed periodically to advanced concepts before these concepts would normally be introduced.
A particularly valuable way for instructors to serve the global learners in their classes, as well as the sequential learners, is to assign creativity exercises – problems that involve generating alternative solutions and bringing in material from other courses or disciplines – and to encourage students who show promise in solving them. Another way to support global learners is to explain their learning process to them. While they are painfully aware of the drawbacks of their learning style, it is usually a revelation to them that they also enjoy advantages – that their creativity and breadth of vision can be exceptionally valuable to future employers and to society. If they can be helped to understand how their learning process works, they may become more comfortable with it, less critical of themselves for having it, and more positive about education in general. If they are given the opportunity to display their unique abilities and their efforts are encouraged in school, the chances of their developing and applying those abilities later in life will be substantially increased.
Conclusion
Learning styles of most engineering students and teaching styles of most engineering professors are incompatible in several dimensions. Many or most engineering students are visual, sensing, inductive, and active, and some of the most creative students are global; most engineering education is auditory, abstract (intuitive), deductive, passive, and sequential. These mismatches lead to poor student performance, professorial frustration, and a loss to society of many potentially excellent engineers.
Although the diverse styles with which students learn are numerous, the inclusion of a relatively small number of techniques in an instructor’s repertoire should be sufficient to meet the needs of most or all of the students in any class. The techniques and suggestions given on this page should sever this purpose.
Professors confronted with this list might feel that it is impossible to do all that in a course and till cover the syllabus. Their concern is not entirely unfounded, some of the recommended approaches – particularly those involving the inductive organization of information and opportunities for student activity during class – may indeed add to the time it takes to present a given body of material.
The idea, however, is not to use all the techniques in every class but rather to pick several that look feasible and try the; keep the ones that work; drop the other; and try a few more in the next course. In this way a teaching style that is both effective for students and comfortable for the professor will evolve naturally and relatively painlessly, with a potentially dramatic effect on the quality of learning that subsequently occurs.
