It doesn’t take a psychology degree to realize that different people learn in different ways. Some are able to sit down with a textbook and read it cover to cover in a few hours, and others need frequent breaks. For every person who needs complete silence in order to focus, there is another one who can’t work without the background noise of a coffee shop or park. One of the most common models used to categorize different learning styles is called the Fleming VARK model. It separates people into visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners.
Knowing what kind of a learner you are can be very helpful throughout school, but especially in college, where students are fully responsible for making sure they’re prepared for exams. While there’s a lot of theory behind the VARK model, the basic idea is that you learn the most efficiently by associating data with certain cues.
For visual learners, it’s helpful to try to visualize the information, such as diagrams and short flash cards. These students may find that illustrating concepts using pictures and graphs help them to remember much more than just blocks of words. Highlighting important passages will help, especially when properly color-coded. Even sitting in the same seat every day will create a visual consistency that will aid in information recall. It may be tough to sell textbooks that are scribbled in at the end of a semester, so a separate notepad may be used to take extensive notes.
Auditory learners are best taught through speaking and hearing, and often have immense difficulty in understanding written instructions. Students are great at oral exams, and may work better with some white noise in the background, like a TV or the ambient sounds of others in a coffee shop. Rather than trying to scan college textbooks silently, it may help to read passages aloud, and record classes on a digital recorder to listen to later. It’s estimated that about 1 in 5 people are auditory learners.
Finally, kinesthetic learners are do-ers. They learn through discovery, by putting things together and manipulating objects in the real world. These students often must move around or fidget while studying, and will usually excel in hands-on tasks like art, sports, and chemistry experiments. They make up about 5% of the population.