Combining Multiple Learning Styles Can Boost Your Comprehension

If you’ve been keeping up with me electronically or in person lately, you already know that I’ve started to self-study computer coding.

I really enjoy choosing study materials for myself because I can combine several modes of learning unlike most of my post-secondary education, which was based on traditional lectures and assigned readings. In just a few weeks I’ve made excellent progress by intentionally pursuing visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning styles. Debate in education sometimes focuses heavily on how to determine which learning style is best for each student, but based on my experience I’d argue that mixing a variety of learning styles can benefit anyone – just the same as how we all need to eat balanced diets that include all of the food groups.

Auditory-Visual:  Online Lectures

I just finished my second online course on Lynda.com:  Javascript Essential Training by Simon Allardice. Listening to this course through headphones made it easy for me to focus on the visual content, whether I was home or underground in the subway. I like having the ability to return to any section whenever I like because it eliminates my worries about missing key details in live lectures.

Visual:  Reading

I’m reading two library books at the same time: (1) Effective JavaScript:  68 Specific Ways to Harness the Power of Javascript by David Herman and (2) Starting out with Programming Logic & Design by Tony Gaddis. Completing just a couple of online courses before I started on these has really facilitated my comprehension of the material.

Kinesthetic:  Interactive Online Tutorials

I haven’t finished an entire course on Codecademy.com yet because I found that its explanations were, at times, insufficient to properly grasp the material. Even so, working directly with HTML, JavaScript and Ruby syntax has further enriched my independent learning.

Photo by Dmitry Baranovskiy (CC BY)