Suppose you want to fix something around your house, like a crack tile, a leaky faucet, or a toilet that won't stop running. But you've never done this job before. Would you search YouTube for a video,? Would you search Google for instructions? Would you buy a book on Amazon? Maybe you'd call a handyman so his help, or perhaps you're the type who would just figure it out. Different people have different ways of learning. In this lesson, let's talk about how you learn. Visual learners, like drawings, pictures, and diagrams. They want to see how things work. A visual person learns more by drawing a flow chart than explaining a concept verbally. Auditory learners want to hear how things work. They'd rather attend to lecture over reading an instruction manual. Auditory and visual learners get more out of a YouTube instruction video than they would by buying a book on plumbing from their local bookstore. Read-write learners, on the other hand, would prefer the book. You might be listening to me right now at two times speed while reading the transcript, impatient for the video to be over. If so, you're probably more of a read-write learner than a visual auditory learner. Kinesthetic learners learn by doing. These people might just take the toilet litter part, then run to the hardware store and figure out what replacement parts they need. Some people are social learners. They like having other people around them to help them figure out the problem. Social learners would love to go to a class and work on projects in groups. Others are solitary learners. They want to be left alone to study quietly. When we'd ROI training design a training program for a team of people, we try to build in different learning modes that cater to all learning styles. These include videos, hands-on labs, links to documentation, and so on. When we record a video, we include the transcript for those that don't have the patience to watch and would rather read. The question is, how do you learn? When you're designing a learning plan for yourself focus on the ways that you learn best. If you are a visual and auditory learner, find online courses with videos or recorded lectures. If you're a social learner, find live in-person classes, join a study group online, or go to some meet-ups. If you learn by doing, find hands-on labs and tutorials that provide real world experience. Likely, your learning style is a combination of all these styles. Whatever certification you're working towards, go to the web, find the certification details. You'll see a section that lists various training resources from in-person courses to videos, to hands-on labs, to links, to documentation, and recommended reading. Think about how you prefer to learn. Then gather resources that cater to your learning styles. Create a document with the links to the learning resources you want to consume. Prioritize these resources and focus on the ones that will work best for your learning style.
