Learning Types
There are a number of distinct ways in which learn. These are is seperate to learning styles or preferences, and instead focus on being foundational descriptions of the ways in which we learn.
- Assimilative - Learning through presented information
- Investigative - Learning by seeking information
- Formative - Learning by trying
- Discursive - Learning by engaging with other perspectives
- Productive - Learning by creating artefacts
- Evaluative - Learning through feedback
- Social - Learning with others
Working in Learning Design, I've come to rely on Learning Types as a tool for understanding our work. The seven types of learning form a solid foundation for discussing, collaborating, and creating effective learning experiences.
Having a vocabulary to discuss learning that is simple and relatable makes learning design understandable. It is not something abstract but one grounded in reality about how we learn.
One of the key ideas of working with these types of learning is that they are best used in combination to form learning sequences or lessons, rather than on their own. In this way they describe distinct blocks of time and activity within a lesson rather than the lesson in its entirety, allowing learners to engage with the concepts and topics in different ways. This improves their ability to learn by increasing the opportunities to connect new information with their schema. One of the easiest diagnostic to find issues with lessons is to look at the lack variety of learning types across the experience. These lessons often only appeal to a single way of learning, which limits the learners ability to find connections with their schema.
These definitions are based on Laurillard (2002), who developed a set of 'Learning Types' as part of her Conversational Framework: Acquisition, Investigation, Practice, Production, Collaboration and Discussion. This work helped establish a way of thinking about learning, and a need for a typology that was made of adjectives of learning. The other aim of this work was to shift away from the tradition teacher led conversational model so that it could suit an instructor-embedded model of learning suitable for online delivery.
See more on the Learning Types website.