In following @Learning2015 this week (the week of Elliot Maisie’s conference: 2015 Learning), I was intrigued by a tweet that proclaimed “Learning styles are NOT effective for learning design.” The tweet directed me to this article, which provides evidence for the claim.

Learning Styles are NOT an Effective Guide for Learning Design

In the paragraph that introduces the evidence for this claim, the author summarizes the conclusion as “To put it simply, using learning styles to design or deploy learning is not likely to lead to improved learning effectiveness.” My learning experience design work has always made me question the validity of using learning styles as a primary design method. I personally see much more value in determining what you actually want your audience to walk away from a learning experience doing, and then building a variety of activities and experiences around that, including using appropriate spacing and reinforcement techniques to actually make the training stick. It’s heartening to see that there’s now more evidence to support discarding learning styles from the accepted training design dialog.

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