How Students Learn, How Teachers Teach, and What Usually Goes Wrong with the Process

 

Students learn in a variety of ways: by seeing and hearing, working alone and in groups, reasoning logically and intuitively, memorizing and visualizing and modeling. Teaching methods also vary: some instructors lecture, others demonstrate or discuss; some focus on principles and others on applications; some emphasize memory and others understanding. How much students learn in a class depends among other things on the match between their learning style preferences and the instructor's teaching style. In this presentation we define different learning styles, explore the consequences of mismatches between learning and teaching styles, and offer ideas for reaching students with a wider variety of teaming styles than are reached with traditional teaching methods.


Office of Learning Excellence - Event Summary

Felder & Brent Learning Styles

 

On April 15, 2005, Drs. Felder & Brent joined us for a seminar discussion on Learning Styles.   We walked through the Learning Styles model !

  • Sensors / Intuitors
  • Visual / Verbal
  • Active / Reflective
  • Sequential / Global

The further discussion of the session was sure to note that Learning Styles is not about turning students into one or more type, but about helping students increase skills on both parts of the continuum. 

 

The Office of Learning Excellence has an online Learning Styles Inventory that you can use in your classroom!  Read out how  Bob Hansen, Ph.D. used the Online Learning Styles inventory in his Carlson class in Marketing.  Listen to how he describes Learning Styles in his class and see some short video of the night Bob and his class talked about the Learning Styles in his course. 

 

Read  more about Learning Styles and this readily available Learning Styles online tool for your classroom!

View Streaming Video presentations of Learning Styles workshop with Felder & Brent from the seminar day (~ 3 hours altogether).   Listen to the interaction and discussion !

 


Felder

Richard M. Felder, Ph.D., is Hoechst Celanese Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina. He is coauthor of Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes (3rd Edition, John Wiley & Sons, 2000), which has been used as the text for the introductory chemical engineering course by most American chemical engineering departments and at many international institutions for more than two decades. He has authored or coauthored over 100 papers on various aspects of teaching and learning.
 
Dr. Felder received the B.Ch.E. degree from the City College of New York in 1962 and the Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton University in 1966. He worked for the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (Harwell, England) and Brookhaven National Laboratory before joining the North Carolina State faculty in 1969. He has won the R.J. Reynolds Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research, and Extension, the AT&T Foundation Award for Excellence in Engineering Education, the Chemical Manufacturers Association National Catalyst Award, the ASEE Chester F. Carlson Award for innovation in engineering education, the AIChE Warren K. Lewis Award for contributions to chemical engineering education, the ASEE Chemical Engineering Division Lifetime Achievement Award for Pedagogical Scholarship, and numerous national and regional awards for his publications on engineering education.
 
Brent

Rebecca Brent, Ed.D.,  is President of Education Designs, Inc., a consulting firm in Cary, North Carolina. Her academic degrees are from Millsaps College (B.A., 1978), Mississippi State University (M.Ed., 1981), and Auburn University (Ed.D., 1988).   Her interests include faculty development in the sciences and engineering, and simulation and multimedia development in teacher education. 
Until December 1996 Dr. Brent was a tenured associate professor at East Carolina University, where she taught undergraduate and graduate courses in language arts, course and curriculum planning, and classroom organization and management. She organized and directed Teachers Learning Collaboratively, a faculty group that studied effective teaching practices and promoted change and growth in university teaching. She received the 1990 Research Article Award from the Organization of Teacher Educators in Reading and the 1993-94 East Carolina Alumni Association Teaching Excellence Award.


Separately and together, Drs. Felder and Brent have presented over 150 workshops and seminars on effective teaching, course design, mentoring and supporting new faculty members, and faculty development in science and technology on campuses throughout the United States and in Europe, Asia, South America, and South Africa. They co-direct and facilitate the annual National Effective Teaching Institute under the auspices of the American Society for Engineering Education.