The Learning Process

Active Listening

In addition to noting non-verbal cues, active listening is another key to learning effectively and communicating with professors and fellow students. There are concrete steps we can take to actively listen in order to get the most out of lectures. Active listening is also useful when working with a partner or group. Here are some important ways we can listen more actively:

1. Pay attention: Look at the speaker and clear your mind of your thoughts to focus on what the speaker is saying. Ignore distractions and note the speaker’s body language in addition to what is being said.
2. Show you are listening: Use your body language by nodding your head, smiling, and creating an open posture to let the speaker know you are listening.
3. Provide feedback: Ask questions to clarify what the speaker is saying. Repeat what they say back to them in your own words so you both know you understood. From time to time, summarize what they’re saying.
4. Label your perception of the speaker’s emotions: Instead of telling people how they are feeling, use phrases like “You sound like you’re” or I hear” to process with them how they sound to you.
5. Defer judgement: Avoid interrupting the speaker to offer your side or position and wait until they have finished making a point to ask questions.
6. Use “I” Messages: Using “I” messages lets the speaker know how they are making you feel. “I” messages are helpful in intense conversation because they are not threatening and won’t put the speaker on the defensive.
7. React appropriately: Be honest in your response and sharing your opinion, while treating the speaker they way you would want to be treated.
8. Pause Purposefully: Use silence for time to think or right before or after an important point.

Active Listening

• Discuss in groups of three what active listening is, what it is not, and review active listening techniques.
• Decide who will be the active listener, who will be the character in the scenario, and who will be the observer as you work through the scenarios below.
• The role player should take a minute to get into character and not just read off the scenario. The active listener should engage in as many active listening techniques as possible while the observer notes if the active listener is effectively using active listening techniques or not.
• Switch roles until everyone in the group has had an opportunity to be the active listener, the role player, and the observer.
• After your group debriefs, be prepared to share key takeaways from this activity with the entire class.

Active Listening Scenario #1: You are in a study group, but you feel like it is a waste of time. You are spending additional time studying to be sure you will pass the tests. You are trying to decide if you should stay or leave the study group and if you leave how you should tell the other group members.

Active Listening Scenario #2: You feel like you aren’t clear on your course grade in your math class. It seems like you have done fairly well on the tests, but when your professor handed out midterm grades, you were shocked at how low yours was. You are trying to decide if you should talk to your professor. If you decide you want to talk to your professor, you are not sure what you will say.

Active Listening Scenario #3: You are upset with the way you were treated at the tutoring center. You don’t feel like you were able to get the help you needed and you still feel stuck on your paper.

Active Listening Scenario #4: Choose an issue you are facing to use instead of one of the role play scenarios above.

Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom. – George Washington Carver

Now that you’ve developed some strategies for coming to class prepared and getting ready to learn, it’s important to learn how to learn. Although there are many strategies, and although each person learns a bit differently, there are some key stages and styles of learning that are similar for most students. One example is that practice is almost always necessary in order to get better at anything. Certainly any athlete or musician can attest to the importance of regular practice, and that same dedication to practice applies to college learning as well.

The Importance of Practice

Take a moment to watch the following video by Kristos called The Process of Learning. As you watch, consider how painful it can be—literally!—to learn something new, but also how much joy can be experienced after it’s learned.

Stages of the Learning Process

Consider experiences you’ve had with learning something new, such as learning to tie your shoes or drive a car. You probably began by showing interest in the process, and after some struggle it became second nature. These experiences were all part of the learning process, which can be described in four stages:

1. Unconscious incompetence: You don’t know what you don’t know yet. This stage happens to everyone when they approach a brand new subject or discover something they’ve never thought about before.
2. Conscious incompetence: You know what you don’t know. This stage can be the most difficult, because you begin to register how much you need to learn. Think about the saying “It’s easier said than done.” In stage 2, you begin to apply new skills that contribute to reaching the learning goal. Successful completion of this stage relies on practice.
3. Conscious competence: You are feeling some confidence about what you do know, but you can’t fully explain what you have learned to someone else. Even though you may be able to process the information you’re receiving in a lecture, you may not yet be able to fully answer a question about it. Stage 3 requires skill repetition.
4. Unconscious competence: You can explain what you have learned to someone else. This final stage is mastery; you have successfully practiced and repeated the process you learned so many times that you can recall and use that information in a variety of contexts.

Although you may feel you are a “master” of a particular skill by the time you reach stage 4, constant practice and reevaluation of which stage you are in is necessary so you can keep learning. ^[1]

The Study Cycle: A Five Step Process

The study cycle, from LSU’s Center for Academic Success, gives the big picture, so you can study more efficiently and have success on your exams.

Preview: Before class look over your notes from the last class and any assigned readings. Note headings, subheading, pictures, graphics, learning objectives, and summaries. Prepare questions to ask about the content.

Attend: Take notes, answer questions, and ask any new questions.

Review: Review your notes, find answers to any missing information or questions within 24 hours.

Study: Review your notes and ask yourself how? why? and what? to make connections. Repetition will move the material from short-term memory to long-term memory, so create study times throughout the week to review content.

Assess: Test yourself by seeing if you can explain the material to another person without looking at your notes or textbook. Ask yourself if you are spending enough time studying and if your study methods are working.

Watch the following video for an overview of the study cycle.

 

Identifying Learning Styles

Many of us are accustomed to very traditional learning styles as a result of our experience as K–12 students. For instance, we can all remember listening to a teacher talk and copying notes off the chalkboard. However, when it comes to learning, one size doesn’t fit all. People have different learning styles and preferences, and these can vary from subject to subject. For example, while one student might prefer listening to recordings to learn Spanish, that same student might prefer hands-on activities like labs to master the concepts in a biology course.

Learning styles or preferences are also called learning modalities. Walter Burke Barbe and his colleagues proposed the following three learning modalities (often identified by the acronym VAK):

1. Visual
2. Auditory
3. Kinesthetic

Examples of these modalities are shown in the table, below.

Visual	Kinesthetic	Auditory
Picture	Gestures	Listening
Shape	Body Movements	Rhythms
Sculpture	Object Manipulation	Tone
Paintings	Positioning	Chants

Neil Fleming’s VARK model expanded on the three modalities described above and added “Read/Write Learning” as a fourth.

The four sensory modalities in Fleming’s model are:

1. Visual learning
2. Auditory learning
3. Read/write learning
4. Kinesthetic learning

Fleming claimed that visual learners have a preference for seeing (visual aids that represent ideas using methods other than words, such as graphs, charts, diagrams, symbols, etc.). Auditory learners best learn through listening (lectures, discussions, tapes, etc.). Read/write learners have a preference for written words (readings, dictionaries, reference works, research, etc.) Tactile/kinesthetic learners prefer to learn via experience—moving, touching, and doing (active exploration of the world, science projects, experiments, etc.).

The VAK/VARK models can be a helpful way of thinking about different learning styles and preferences, but they are certainly not the last word on how people learn or prefer to learn. Many educators consider the distinctions useful, finding that students benefit from having access to a blend of learning approaches. Other educators find the idea of three or four “styles” to be distracting or limiting.

In the college setting, you’ll probably discover that instructors teach their course materials according to the method they think will be most effective for all students. Thus, regardless of your individual learning preference, you will probably be asked to engage in all types of learning. For instance, even though you consider yourself to be a “visual learner,” you will still probably have to write papers in some of your classes. This is a good thing: research suggests that it’s good for the brain to learn in new ways and that learning in different modalities can help learners become more well-rounded.

Consider the following statistics on how much content students absorb through different learning methods:

• 10 percent of content they read
• 20 percent of content they hear
• 30 percent of content they visualize
• 50 percent of content they both visualize and hear
• 70 percent of content they say
• 90 percent of content they say and do

The range of these results underscores the importance of varying the ways you study and engage with learning materials.

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