Student Motivation and Learning Preferences Discussion
The Next Biggest Thing in Corporate Training
Pretend that you are the head of corporate training in a large organization. The CEO has come back from a conference and is excited about this new learning styles inventory that all employees took. You listen to the CEO ramble on about all the quizzes and other exploratory activities that they did. Apparently, the results translate to a color and an animal that each describe one’s learning style and something else that you’ve never seen mentioned in respected academic literature.
The CEO seems excited to have the label of “Red Donkey” and proudly displays the conference materials around the office. There’s even talk about getting everyone colored nametags with their corresponding animals. Suddenly, you realize that you are in danger of being replaced by educational snake-oil salesmen.
You need to head off this insanity.
- You know that your training is based on solid educational research and your own professional experience in the field. Using what you have learned up to this week, describe your training to your boss.
- Address issues such as:
- Learning styles vs. learning preference
- Self-directed learning
- Addressing differences in the classroom
- Learner motivation
- Make your description exciting and fun, like a sales pitch. You are competing with for-profit trainers who use gimmicks that mimic social media quizzes (i.e., Buzzfeed quizzes where you find out your Harry Potter soulmate or who should be your prom date from The Breakfast Club) and pseudo-educational terms like “learning preference index.”
- Address issues such as:
- Respond to one of your classmates and pretend that you are the CEO.
- Are you convinced by their pitch? Or are you going to start ordering those colored animal nametags?
- Support your response with material from the readings.
- Feel free to assign your classmate an arbitrary color and an animal if you think they aren’t convincing enough.