Understanding how learning styles differ and how they overlap can impact how effectively you communicate and interact with others. Integrating and Choosing From Visual, Auditory, Reading or Kinesthetic Learning Styles It’s much better to think of everyone having a toolbox of ways to think, and think to yourself, which tool is best?” Everyone is able to think in words, everyone is able to think in mental images. In the above mentioned Atlantic post, writer Khazan cited Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia: “people should stop thinking of themselves as visual, verbal, or some other kind of learner. But I still spend an enormous amount of time reading, writing, and making things as a way to express a concept or demonstrate a technology.

I have spent a lot of time studying video marketing, infographics, and other visual methods of conveying a message. Since then, podcasts, video, still images via Instagram, and a host of other methods have grown in popularity (not to say that they did not have some popularity before that). I shared in that post that 65 percent of us are visual learners, according to the Social Science Research Network. In a 2013 post, I researched how visual learning started playing out on social media with the viral phenomena known as infographics. How Can Technology Impact Our Learning Style And that idea has been breaking down barriers – physical and cultural.

The maker movement embraces hands-on learning through making, building, creating and collaborating. In another post, writer Caroline Linne asks, in essence, what can you do when traditional visual, auditory, or kinesthetic methods are not enough? She highlights how one of the best ways to teach STEM to students who have not mastered English is via maker culture tactics. More Kinesthetic Learning Via Makerspaces and Maker Culture While his book and discussions around multiple learning styles is most often aimed at kids in classrooms, it can also impact how we interact at work and offers ways for better employee communication.

She cites psychologist Howard Garner who states that there is “strong evidence that human beings have a range of intelligences.” Garner explores this in his 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. On one of my favorite education sites,, writer Lisa Low debunks four myths about learning style and the first myth is that students have only one learning style.

Become auditory learning style