Learning Styles Essay

" ... previous research with the instrument has identified four learning styles that are associated with different approaches to learning: diverging, assimilating, converging, and accommodating ". (Kolb, 2005, p.196). When it comes to learning styles, I believe that all individuals are capable of "absorbing" information through these various styles but generally have a preference to one specific style depending on their social patterns, nature of job and abundance of information in that area. I would say that my strongest preference of learning style is through the Converging approach where I like to take information available and absorb it only by "doing" the same and relate it to personal applications wherever possible. I remember I was attending a seminar a few weeks ago when the vendor was showing us how to customize certain elements of a page to create a customized solution suitable for the department (let us assume that it is a form builder for simplicity sake). I was zoned out for the first 30 minutes of the presentation because these activities only enables us to remember the actions performed to reach the goal rather than understanding the overall objective and the underlying functionality of the solution. So what I did was asked to take over the presentation, came up with a few examples for myself and did the configuration changes by myself as per my basic understanding of the tool, and asked questions wherever I got 'stuck'. Now I know that I will remember this forever and also try to manage for future random occurrences. Similarly, before beginning this module, I was under the impression that this masters program teaches us to expand our horizon from an experience perspective as we interact directly with many students and colleagues but what I realized is that it actually helps us to "think deeper" to address a situation and not just absorb statements as facts without understanding the concept thoroughly.
I find that doing Grint's discussions in week...