For this week’s reflection, I wanted to do something a little different. For the past few units, we have mainly focused on ourselves: our learning backgrounds, our cultures, and most recently our own learning styles. As I mentioned in the forum, I am a verbal learner. I can understand and remember things better if I read it or hear it. I know that because I have identified this way, I can utilize information in specific ways so that I can make the most of my class time. However, I am also concerned about how to learn as a class. Do the different styles of my classmates have an effect on the way that I learn? So this week, I asked a handful of friends to tell me about their learning style. This is what they had to say…

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After interviewing my friends, something surprised me. A lot of them did not know what learning style they used and had trouble identifying it. But once they could look at a list, they started to think about it for the first time. In the end, it seemed that visual learning was in the majority and so I started to think about how this would affect a classroom. In a perfect universe, professors would include modes of teaching that would address all learning styles. Unfortunately, I found that this does not occur naturally. Most professors stick to one style of teaching. But there is one important thing I learned from talking to my peers: all learning styles are needed to create one cohesive unit. It builds the class as students become teachers. Students have more one-on-one contact so they can translate they style of teaching into the style of learning that a friend needs. Students are learning by teaching. And by helping each other, classes become stronger and more productive.