4.1. The Learning Cycle: Four Steps to Learning

One of the first steps for becoming a successful student is to understand the learning process itself. Certain characteristics of effective learning, including the four-step learning cycle, are true of all people. At the same time, people have different learning styles. Understanding these processes is important for maximizing your own learning while in college.

Adult learning is different from learning in primary and secondary school. In high school, teachers often take much of the responsibility for how students learn—encouraging learning with class discussions, repeating key material, creating study guides, and looking over students’ shoulders to make sure no one falls behind. In college, most of the responsibility for learning falls on the student. You’re free to fail—or succeed—as you choose. This applies as well to how well you learn.

Learning an academic subject means really understanding it, being able to think about it in meaningful ways and to apply that understanding in new situations. This is very different from simply memorizing something and repeating it back on a test. Academic learning occurs most effectively in a cycle of four steps:

1. Preparing
2. Absorbing
3. Capturing
4. Reviewing

Think first about the different situations in which you learn. Obviously, you learn during class, whether by listening to the instructor speak or in class discussions in which you participate. But you also learn while reading your textbooks and other materials outside of class. You learn when you talk with an instructor during office hours. You learn by talking with other students informally in study groups. You learn when you study your class notes before an exam. All these different learning situations involve the same four-step process.

Figure 1.4 The Learning Cycle

Prepare

One student rolls out of bed a few minutes before class and dashes across campus and grabs the last seat in the hall just as the instructor begins a lecture; it takes him a few minutes to find the right notebook in his backpack, and then he can’t find a pencil. He’s thinking about how he should’ve set his alarm a little earlier, so he’d have had time to grab a cup of coffee, since he’s having trouble waking up. Finally, he settles in his seat and starts listening, but now he can’t figure out what the instructor is talking about. He starts jotting down phrases in his notes, anyway, thinking he’ll figure it out later.

Another student looks over his notes from the previous class and quickly glances back at passages he’d highlighted in the textbook reading before class. He arrives at class a few minutes early, sits up front where he can hear well, and has his notebook open and pencil out. While waiting for the instructor to arrive, he talks to another student about her ideas for the paper due next week in this class.

It’s obvious which of these students will learn more during today’s class lecture. One has prepared and the other has not, and they will experience a huge difference in their understanding of today’s topic. Preparing to learn is the first step for learning. The same is true when you sit down to read your textbook, to study for an exam, or to work on an out-of-class project. Partly you are putting yourself in the right mind-set to learn. But when you review yesterday’s notes to prepare for today’s class, you are also solidifying yesterday’s learning.

Absorb

“Absorbing” refers to the actual taking in of new ideas, information, or experience. This is what happens at the moment a student listens to a class lecture or reads a textbook. In high school, this is sometimes the only learning step taken by some students. They listened to what the instructor said and “regurgitated” it back on the test. But this won’t work in college because learning now requires understanding the topic, not just repeating facts or information.

Capture

“Capturing” refers to taking notes. No matter how good your memory, you need to take good notes in college simply because there is so much to learn. Just hearing something once is seldom enough. You must go back over the material again, sometimes several times, thinking about it and seeing how it all fits together.

The more effective your note-taking skills, the better your learning abilities. Take notes also when reading your textbooks.

Review

The step of reviewing—your class notes, your textbook reading and notes, and any other course materials possibly including recordings, online media, podcasts, and so on—is the next step for solidifying your learning and reaching a real understanding of the topic. Reviewing is also a way to prepare for new information and ideas. That’s why this is a learning cycle: the end of the process loops back to the beginning as you prepare for additional learning.

Reviewing is also the step in which you discover whether you really understand the material. If you do not understand something fully, you may need to reread a section of the book, talk it over with a friend in the class, or go see your instructor.

What’s Your Learning Style?

Different people have different learning styles. Style refers to a student’s specific learning preferences and actions. One student may learn more effectively from listening to the instructor. Another learns more effectively from reading the textbook, while another student benefits most from charts, graphs, and images the instructor presents during a lecture.

Learning style is important in college. Each different style, described later in more detail, has certain advantages and disadvantages compared with other styles. None is “right” or “wrong.” You can learn to use your own style more effectively.

College instructors also have different teaching styles, which may or may not match up well with your learning style. Although you may personally learn best from a certain style of teaching, you cannot expect that your instructors will use exactly the style that is best for you. Therefore, it is important to know how to adapt to teaching styles used in college.

Different systems have been used to describe the different ways in which people learn. Some describe the differences between how extroverts (outgoing, gregarious, social people) and introverts (quiet, private, contemplative people) learn. Some divide people into “thinkers” and “feelers.” A popular theory of different learning styles is Howard Gardner’s “multiple intelligences,” based on eight different types of intelligence:

1. Verbal (prefers words)
2. Logical (prefers math and logical problem solving)
3. Visual (prefers images and spatial relationships)
4. Kinesthetic (prefers body movements and doing)
5. Rhythmic (prefers music, rhymes)
6. Interpersonal (prefers group work)
7. Intrapersonal (prefers introspection and independence)
8. Naturalist (prefers nature, natural categories)

The multiple intelligences approach recognizes that different people have different ways, or combinations of ways, of relating to the world.

Another approach to learning styles is called the VARK approach, which focuses on learning through different senses (Visual, Aural, Reading/Writing, and Kinesthetic):

• Visual learners prefer images, charts, and the like.
• Aural learners learn better by listening.
• Reading/writing learners learn better through written language.
• Kinesthetic learners learn through doing, practicing, and acting.

Activity 4.1: VARK Learning Styles Assessment

Take the VARK Learning Styles Assessment (http://vark-learn.com/the-vark-questionnaire/.). Write down your preferred learning style: ________________

Read the Study Strategies for your preferred learning styles provided on the website.

What are some strategies that are helpful for this learning style?

What strategies will you start using to help you learn more easily?

Knowing about your personality style can also help you know more about your learning preferences and how you can develop study strategies that are most effective for you.

Activity 4.2: Personalty Style Assessment

To learn more about personality and learning preferences, take the Jung Typology Test (https://www.humanmetrics.com/personality).

When you submit, you will receive your four-letter personality type. Write it down: ____________________________

Click on the Type Description link and read the description of your personality style.

Then select the Learning Styles tab on the right and read about your personality and learning.

Keeping in mind your personality style, what are some strategies you can use to help you learn better?

Just knowing your style, however, doesn’t automatically provide a solution for how to do your best in your college courses. For example, although you may be a kinesthetic learner, you’ll likely still have textbook reading assignments (verbal learning) as well as lecture classes (listening). All students need to adapt to other ways of learning.

The following chapter look at the keyways in which learning occurs in college classes and offer some suggestions about how to adapt your strengths for success.

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