Shanghai Tech WriterTechnical Writing, Technology, Web2.0, Google, Shanghai, China

Gryphon Mountain Journals wrote a few really good posts about learning styles and how they affect how we write documentation. Please check out his posts!

• The Visual Learning Style in Tech Writing
• The Auditory Learning Style in Tech Writing
• The Tactile Learning Style in Tech Writing

I’ve been thinking about learning styles for some time but haven’t been able to gather my thoughts together to write a few good posts regarding them. For the time being, I’ll just share briefly about my experience working with learning styles.

Learning Styles in the Classroom

I used to be a teacher—taught elementary school for six years—so I think about learning styles all the time. If I were to count all the students I’ve ever taught in the last six years, the number would be in the upper 3-digits. Every one of my students were unique and each one had a different learning style. It was my job as a teacher to reach out to my students and teach them in ways they could understood and relate to naturally. Some were visual learners, some were tactile learners, some were auditory learners, some were kinesthetic learners, and some were . . .  or had ADHD.

Regardless what learning style or styles each student prescribed to, it was my job to understand them and craft my lessons to fit their needs. For the visual learners, I prepared lots of visual aids. For the tactile learners, I prepared lots of activities like experiments, crafts, and games. For the auditory learners, I taught them a few songs and mnemonics to remember a few important things. For the kinesthetic learners, we went on scavenger hunts around the school campus. And for the ADHD ones, I tied them to their chairs and taped their mouths shut. Just kidding. I combined different methods to make my lessons as interactive and engaging as I could.

I’m not sure what the statistics are for adults, but as an elementary school teacher, I’d say less than 1% of my students learn from reading textbooks alone. Lessons have to be greatly supplemented by activities, assignments, projects, experiments, presentations, and so on. I should also mention that the least effective lessons are lectures, from which I endured great suffering during high school and college.

Learning Styles of Adults

Well, so what about adults? Hopefully as maturity sets in, adults are more attentive than children, but still, what are the statistics? What percentage of adults prefer reading over visual? Lectures over experiments? I realize I’m not very objective because I am heavily biased towards as minimal amount of lecturing and reading as possible. That’s my learning style but what about everyone else? What about you?

Now that I’m no longer teaching but instead, am a technical writer, I still think about learning styles. It’s second nature to me to think about these things when I’m “instructing” someone, only now it’s in the form of writing help manuals. I must say I completely disagree with how most help manuals are written today. To say it bluntly, they are extremely B-O-R-I-N-G. 99% of them put me to sleep that I don’t bother reading them unless I really can’t figure things out myself. I wouldn’t exactly say they are poorly written, only that most of them aren’t written in a “language” or learning style that I understand.

Integrating Learning Styles in Documentation

If technical writers were to take learning styles into consideration when writing technical documentation, what would it look like? How would we write documentation? And lastly, what would be the responses from end-users? These are questions I hope to explore in the future. In the mean time, Gryphon Mountain Journals wrote a few really good posts addressing these issues. Check them out!