Professor Robert Hansen broadens the learning curve by employing The Learning Styles Inventory Tool

Bob Hansen originally became interested in the topic of Learning Styles when his daughter brought home an evaluation of her learning preferences from school. He searched out different types of inventories for use in his class but elected not to use them due to copyright issues. Bob was pleased to find that Paul Wieser, the Director of the Office of Learning Excellence, was looking to test a new tool for Carlson faculty, the Felder-Solomon Inventory of Learning Styles.


In the fall of 2004, Bob gave his MBA 6210: Marketing Management students the link to the webpage that allowed them to take a 44 question inventory to have their personal learning tendencies evaluated. The tool also allowed Bob to take the inventory and then show how his responses matched up with those of the entire class. Stressing to the class that there are no right or wrong answers, Bob found the use of the Learning Styles Tool to be a good way to show his students that he really cared about their learning and wanted the course to be a positive and successful experience for them.

The Learning Styles Inventory places the user's preferences along four distinct spectrums: Reflective/Active, Intuitive/Sensing, Verbal/Visual, and Global/Sequential. Class discussion revolved around understanding the balance of learning styles on both individual and class-wide levels. Bob was able to show his students why sometimes it might seem like he was coming "from a different planet" as his learning styles makeup was much different from most of the class. The discussion allowed Bob to illustrate the course format, highlighting that there were no pure lectures, no pure case formats, but "something for everyone." Bob employs a "spin around group discussion" format for active learners, handouts for reflective learners, copies of the PowerPoint slides for verbal learners, and many pictures and diagrams for visual learners.

In addition, Bob encouraged his students to take what they had learned from their personal learning styles and apply it to other classes. Understanding the way a professor teaches allows students to compensate for their preferred learning styles. Not only does Bob encourage an academic use of learning styles, but he was quick to point out the business world application of the tool. Everyone processes and presents information during the course of a business day. Students were able to use their Learning Style Distributions to inform supervisor/employee relationships as well.


Bob's satisfaction with the Learning Styles Tool was reinforced when he received his mid-course evaluations. A number of students stated their appreciation of the tool and how it helped them improve their learning experience in his class.

Click on the following links to view video clips of Bob in action!

Learning Styles Distibution Clip
Diversity of Styles Clip




The distribution of learning styles in Bob's class is depicted above. Bob's scores are in blue and the numbers indicate the number of students that received a given score.

For more information on the Learning Styles Tool and how you could use it in your own classes, contact Paul Wieser at pwieser@carlson.umn.edu or go to this link to take the Learning Styles inventory yourself: http://apps.csom.umn.edu/learningstyles/.

Also, on Friday April 15th, the author of the Learning Styles Inventory Tool, Richard Felder, Ph.D. was on campus along with Rebecca Brent, Ph.D. for an Office of Learning Excellence sponsored workshop on Learning Styles. For more information about the workshop, click here.