This is a good article, but it only touches on the main issue with learning styles. Multiple independent groups of educational psychologists (if I remember correctly it was three) reviewed all the articles they could find on learning styles. They found that the majority of the studies had poor experimental design, since they were missing proper control groups. Of the remaining studies there were more examples of negative results for learning styles than positive results. This was pretty damning, given the publication bias for positive results in academic research. The article links to one of these reviews, but here is another one:
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3....
I teach science, and it's frustrating that nearly all of my students can tell me their learning style. Their previous teachers have taught them about learning styles as a way to improve their studying, and they've jumped on that information. But the literature indicates that matching instruction to a learning style doesn't improve learning. This is a total waste because we're effectively giving students a magic talisman to help them learn science, because once students find out it's wrong they'll be less likely to take our advice on studying, and because the time we waste on it could be spent on telling people about real things that actually improve learning.
They choose the topic. I'm fine with anything in biology, medicine, chemistry, and even some social science topics. Some of them run into trouble and others don't depending on what they choose.
I've considered removing the assignment a few times, but there's no skill more essential to success in science than the ability to synthesize different research articles into a coherent whole. I wouldn't feel like I was doing my job if I stopped assigning it.
Community colleges like the one I work at can't afford the journal fees. One of my assignments involves reading several peer-reviewed articles on a narrow topic and writing an explanation of the research. Every semester I have students that struggle with finishing this assignment because the articles they need are inaccessible.
I teach community college biology, and I agree that we're really bad at teaching critical thinking. But the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) cited by this article was graded by a computer last time I checked. Here's a direct quote from one of their papers a few years ago:
"Beginning in fall 2010, we moved to automated scoring exclusively, using Pearson’s Intelligent Essay Assess
or (IEA). IEA is the automated scoring engine developed by Pearson Knowledge Technologies to evaluate the meaning of text, not just writing mechanics. Pearson has trained IEA for the CLA using real CLA responses and scores to ensure
its consistency with scores generated by human raters."
Most of you are more knowledgeable about technology than I am. So I'll leave it to you to decide if using an algorithm to grade an essay-based exam of critical thinking is a valid approach to this problem.
I teach biology at a community college and most of the services listed in that article wouldn't improve my courses. I've already switched three of my four courses over to open textbooks, which students can download for free or purchase for the cost of printing. I use Openstax for these.
For the online learning software, I've also dumped the publisher products and switched to the free spaced-repetition software Memrise.
I think most of my colleagues will be moved over to open educational resources within fifteen years, and I'm not sure there's long-term profit to be made in this market.
> We didn't know how to talk or study or dress or think the way our peers did. It took me years to learn.
Please tell me everything about this. I teach at a community college and my students come from the middle class, the working class, and the place I can't see.
Yes that's wrong, but the paper that corrected this misconception wasn't published until January of 2016. I think you should give them at least a year to update before unleashing the disapproving scowl.
The most disappointing YC-backed product I tried was Stypi.
I teach community college and sometimes I wonder about the thought processes behind some of my students' papers. Paul Graham linked an essay he wrote in Stypi, where you could watch him write it in real time. This was clearly the greatest computer-assisted tool for teaching writing ever, and I immediately incorporated Stypi into one of my writing assignments. I wanted to know how much my students proofread, how they structured essays, and what they struggled with as they wrote. I was so excited about it that I wrote the entire assignment in Stypi and linked my students to the replay in case they were interested.
It was a disaster. So many students lost essays in browser crashes or were flat out unable to use the software. I ultimately had to apologize to my class, give everyone an extension, and cut Stypi out of the project.
Apparently they were acquired though, so I guess they made someone happy.
I teach science, and it's frustrating that nearly all of my students can tell me their learning style. Their previous teachers have taught them about learning styles as a way to improve their studying, and they've jumped on that information. But the literature indicates that matching instruction to a learning style doesn't improve learning. This is a total waste because we're effectively giving students a magic talisman to help them learn science, because once students find out it's wrong they'll be less likely to take our advice on studying, and because the time we waste on it could be spent on telling people about real things that actually improve learning.