In the educational world, learning styles can be a taboo subject. The learning style field is filled with nearly a dozen distinct models all claiming to encapsulate and categorize learners. As an education professional, I frequently must modify teaching opportunities to my students and their various learning styles. This can become overwhelming – you must plan material that is compatible with the various learning style types.
In my current position, I am responsible for training new employees on the various electronic health record (EHR) systems (there are dozens of them). A specific health information management (HIM) employee may start their day using a Cerner system, move before lunch to an e-Clinical Works (eCW) system, and then end the day with the NextGen or AllScripts EHR. Not only do these HIM professionals need familiarity with the various systems, everyone supporting them (e.g., their supervisor, manager, quality assurance professional, etc.) must also be proficient in the systems. And, I am responsible to better develop training to educate HIM employees on these various systems.
I have not, to date, identified more than a few ways to teach something like an EHR to someone. The learner can read about it, hear about it, watch it, practice on it, or teach it. This is also the logical progression for how a person learns about a topic. Currently, I have structured training to involve portions of reading, listening, watching, and practicing on the EHR. I am always looking for a better way to train; therefore, I start reviewing over learning styles again.
Among the various learning styles is the Felder-Silverman learning styles model (1988). has four dimensions: active vs. reflective; sensing vs. intuitive; visual vs. verbal; and, sequential vs. global. A typically learner would fall somewhere on each of these planes. An active learner, for example, would want to work in a group more than a reflective learner, who would generally prefer to work individually. For me, it really depends on the materials or topic what type of education I prefer.
Similar to how we compartmentalize people with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), I believe we can utilize a similar model to understand the aspects of learning styles. By breaking down each dimension, we could create quadratic categorizations with brief descriptions on an activity that would best operationalize the specific learner. So, I tried to do this. That is, I sought to produce 16 different activities, each geared toward a specific Felder-Silverman learning style. As a caveat, I had to rename “sensing” to “direct” and “verbal” to “words” in order to come up with the included guide. Here is my view on this topic: EHR Training FSLMS
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