Every employee brings unique experience, skills, and perspectives to the workplace. This not only shapes how they embody their roles within an organization but also how they solve problems, adapt to challenges, and engage with training activities at work.
Over the past several years, corporate learning and development (L&D) strategies have come to embrace the idea that not only do individuals have various learning needs and preferences, but educators, instructors, and training facilitators need to cater to these differences to teach effectively.
This can look different depending on the nature of the training program but might involve using multiple teaching modalities in a single course, incorporating new teaching technology, or providing employees with different training methods to choose from as they learn.
In education, a learning style is an approach to learning that resonates most with an individual. Many learners have multiple preferred learning styles or shift between styles for different types of information. This concept has become more flexible over time, with educators and trainers moving towards a multimodal learning model that leverages a multi-sensory approach to learning.
Still, learning styles remain an effective tool educators can use to provide learners with personalized lessons and activities that keep them engaged and help them retain more information in the long run.
In this article, we will provide an overview of the most common learning styles, including influential factors and frequently asked questions. We will also explain how your L&D team can use Whatfix to create effective and engaging workplace learning experiences for your employees.
What Are the Different Types of Learning Styles?
- Visual learning
- Auditory learning
- Reading and writing
- Kinesthetic learning
- Social learning
- Solitary learning
- Analytical learning
7 Main Types of Learning Styles
Let’s explore the seven most prominent types of learning styles: visual learning, auditory learning, reading and writing, kinesthetic learning, social learning, solitary learning, and analytic learning.
1. Visual learning
Visual learners learn best by observing through sight and visualization. Teaching visual learners requires instructors to represent ideas visually rather than through more traditional lectures. Instructors should include visual elements in L&D activities like videos, graphics, diagrams, and images to reach these learners. It is also helpful to encourage learners to use visual simulations and demonstrations or deliver information via webinars rather than in print.
Workplace learning tools that best serve visual learners include webinars, video tutorials, and in-person demonstrations.
2. Auditory learning
Auditory learners are more attuned to information delivered via speech and process that information by repeating it aloud. When teaching auditory learners, it is important to include activities involving talking and listening, which can be done in various formats, such as traditional lectures, group discussions, or other face-to-face learning and group activities involving summarizing and explaining different concepts.
Workplace learning tools that best serve auditory learners include lecture recording tools in learning management systems (LMS), podcasts, and collaborative learning software.
3. Reading and writing
Reading and writing-inclined learners respond best to the written word. This makes more traditional teaching methods like reading book chapters and training manuals.
Instructors can reach these individuals through exercises that involve interacting with message boards, reading and writing blog posts, or participating in written assignments like worksheets and short essays.
Workplace learning tools that best serve reading and writing-inclined learners include old-school books, manuals, and information repositories like knowledge bases.
Instructional designers and trainers can take a blended learning approach, combining reading and writing with visuals to produce more engaging, effective training materials, such as step-by-step instructions or process documentation featuring annotated screenshots.
4. Kinesthetic learning
Kinesthetic learners learn by doing through tactile, hands-on experiences. Teaching kinesthetic learners requires incorporating real-life examples into course materials, exercises, and descriptions that stress the practical applications of topics.
Activities like hands-on training, role playing scenarios, and experimentation in simulated environments like a sandbox application environment or virtual setting are best for keeping kinesthetic learners engaged.
According to the 70-20-10 rule of learning, 70% of all learning comes from these hands-on learning experiences, with 20% coming from social learning, and 10% from traditional training sessions.
In the modern digital workplace, L&D teams can best serve kinesthetic learners with in-app tutorials that guide users through tasks and processes, or with application simulation experiences.
PRO TIP
With Whatfix Mirror, quickly create replica sandbox environments of your mission-critical software and the workflows of your employees’ tasks. With Whatfix DAP, create in-app tutorials like Tours, Task Lists, Smart Tips, and Flows that guide employees through these simulated software tasks, allowing them to learn by doing, without risking live software usage. This accelerates time-to-proficiency for new employees or during a new software implementation, and provides on-demand performance support for employees in the flow of work, available anytime.
5. Social learning
Social learners respond best to learning activities involving peer work and conversations. For these learners, socializing makes the learning feel more engaging, resulting in a deeper understanding. Instructors trying to reach social learners can incorporate role-playing scenarios, group discussions, peer-to-peer learning exercises, and even group projects to get learners’ gears turning.
Workplace learning tools that best serve social learners are digital social learning platforms and virtual classroom software with breakout rooms in virtual classrooms.
6. Solitary learning
In contrast to social learning, some individuals are solitary learners who prefer working alone. Teachers can reach these learners by requiring solitary work, such as journal activities, problem-solving exercises, and individual recognition.
Workplace learning tools that best serve solitary learners are learning management systems and digital adoption platforms (DAP) with in-app guidance and support features that allow users to help themselves learn at their own pace as the need arises.
7. Analytical learning
Analytical learners require context to internalize new information and tend to thrive using experience to solve problems and understand new concepts. Instructors can cater to the needs of analytical learners by incorporating big-picture ideas, background details, and problem-solving exercises into learning content.
Workplace learning tools that best serve analytical learners include digital adoption platforms that offer contextual in-app guidance and informative tooltips, as well as self-help knowledge repositories that allow learners to dig deep and research the reasons behind their issues and their solutions via self-help user support.
PRO TIP
With Whatfix DAP, enable your employees the contextual knowledge and support they need, inside their applications, with Self Help. Self Help integrates with your knowledge repositories (like your knowledge base, training docs, LMS courses, SOPs, company policies, etc.), presenting employees with contextual help articles and documentation to support them on the tasks they’re completing. Employees can search for any issue they’re facing using Self Help’s search function, and its GenAI can provide conversational answers based on your internal knowledge.
Factors That Influence Learning Style
Learning styles can be influenced by various internal and external factors, from motivations and interests to previous experiences and cultural backgrounds. L&D teams should consider these factors to better empathize with learners and create optimal workplace training programs.
Cognitive factors
Different learners have unique ways of thinking about, conceptualizing, and remembering information. These different cognitive situations are often called information processing or cognitive learning styles. For example, some people are sequential learners who understand best when provided with step-by-step instruction, while others need to understand the broader context before they get to the details.
Emotional factors
Emotional factors also shape employee learning styles by influencing their capacity to engage in learning activities. Existing interest, enthusiasm, or even anxiety about a given subject or activity can substantially impact team members’ motivation to engage with related content. Variable confidence levels and fear of failing or imposter syndrome can all play a role in this as well. For instance, if an employee remembers having a hard time reading or speaking publicly in their earlier years, they might be too overwhelmed to benefit from engaging in those activities as adults in the workplace.
Types of learning styles+
FAQs
How to identify the preferred learning style?
There are many different ways to identify your employees’ learning styles. Depending on how closely you will be working with individual learners, you may be able to observe their tendencies through the way they take notes or how engaged they are when participating in different types of activities.
Beyond direct observation, L&D teams can gather behavioral data from employee feedback, performance reviews, and user analytics. For example, your team might ask about learning styles directly via a learning questionnaire during onboarding. You can also ask learners for feedback at different points in their learning journeys or use behavior analytics tools in the learning software they use to assess their affinities for certain types of learning over others.
How to teach for multiple learning styles?
When tasked with teaching individuals with differing learning styles, it is important to incorporate various teaching methods and learning options into L&D activities. This might mean switching between approaches for different lessons or providing various options for how learners can interact with training content.
L&D teams can also build feedback loops into eLearning paths to continuously adapt learning content to individual learners and enhance engagement create a culture of collaboration among learners to satisfy the needs of employees with tendencies toward social learning.
Why are learning styles important?
Understanding the learning styles of employees is important because it can help L&D teams develop and deliver engaging learning content to all employees, regardless of their backgrounds, and differences in learning abilities. By creating learning activities that engage an organization’s entire workforce, L&D teams can keep employees engaged and motivated to learn, which in turn makes employees more productive in their roles and motivated to grow with your organization. In the long run, catering to the needs of your employees helps L&D teams foster a workforce that can help companies meet goals, stay competitive, and live up to their core values.
What other factors besides learning styles impact learning?
Humans are complex, and so are the ways we learn. Many different factors contribute to how employees learn differently from one another, including previous experience, overall workload, personal stressors, and professional goals that may or may not align with their current situation. Consider all these factors when developing L&D programming to ensure that it aligns holistically with your employees’ learning needs.
Whatfix empowers L&D leaders to create content that works for learners across any organization. This application sits on top of your existing workplace software interface to provide in-app guidance and support to employees as they learn new software or processes within that software.
The Whatfix Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) includes easy-to-use, no-code design tools that help L&D teams create timely learning content and self-serve knowledge bases that learners can engage with in their moment of need. Whatfix Mirror your team can even design simulated software environments employees can use to practice what they’ve learned without affecting live company data.
Whatfix helps L&D teams provide personalized and useful information to employees on-demand to satsify their learning needs and preferences around the clock.
All employees are unique and require personalized learning paths to reach their full potential in the workplace. While curating individual learning activities for every employee might seem difficult, modern digital solutions like Whatfix can ease your team through the process. Use Whatfix DAP to create and deliver timely, contextual support as employees learn new software tasks, Whatfix Mirror to provide space for creative, risk-free experimentation, and Whatfix Analytics to monitor and improve learning programs as your organization and its employees grow.
Help your employees by adapting your business’ learning content to various employee learning styles with Whatfix.
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