Making Learning FUN

The tension between ideals of academic excellence and transformative educational experience for all our students has been an enduring theme in American education. Generations of educators and politicians have struggled to reconcile high standards with the laudable goal of helping all students achieve.
To learn, we depend on our senses to process the information around us. Most people tend to use one of their senses more than the others. Honey & Mumford set out four distinct learning styles of students:

1. Activists: ‘here and now’, gregarious, seek challenge and immediate experience, open-minded, bored with implementation.
2. Reflectors: ‘stand back’, gather data, ponder and analyse, delay reaching conclusions, listen before speaking, thoughtful.
3. Theorists: think things through in logical steps, assimilate disparate facts into coherent theories, rationally objective, reject subjectivity and flippancy.
4. Pragmatists: seek and try out new ideas, practical, down-to-earth, enjoy problem solving and decision-making quickly, bored with long discussions.

These 4 learner types are visible in every student group which presents lecturer with the challenge of making sure everyone keeps up. Using a simulation is an ideal solution to this type of situation where a lecturer must make a decision between efficiency or quality. A simulation lets the different learner types engage and learn at their own pace in a non-linear fashion. This means that a lecturer does not have to choose efficiency over academic rigor and can maintain a high standard in all their courses.

President Barack Obama said, “It is time to prepare every child, everywhere in America, to out-compete any worker, anywhere in the world. It is time to give all Americans a complete and competitive education from the cradle up through a career.” Although translating that rhetoric about rigor into classroom reality is not easy, with simulations it is possible.