Essay Sample on Adult Personal Learning Inventory

Conceptually, adult education is a range of formal and non-formal and informal learning activities done by adults after a break upon leaving a primary education or training and results in the acquisition of a new set of skills and knowledge. According to Knowles (1962), adults are self-directed and independent learners who know why they are learning and can learn and comprehend the value of the topic as presented. As such, it works best when most guides are task-based and hugely problem-solving. In his theory, Andragogy takes note of these assumptions:

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Adults know why they require learning something; adults learning should be experiential; adult learning need to be problem-solving, and adults learning are best when the topic under study has immediate value. The idea of learning style inventory in educational programs may be perceived inappropriate when studies fail to establish that there is a clear connection between the educational techniques and the learning styles.

Adult learning is engulfed with maturity, self-confidence, independence and sound decision making that are hugely practical, multi-tasking, purposeful and self-motivated; consequently, there is less reception to new ideas and reception to change that in a way affects their motivation and ability to learn. This paper, therefore, seeks to look into my experience while taking the learning inventory questionnaire and my position on the overall results (Solaman & Felder, n.d).

Reflective learner

Based on my scores upon completion of the questionnaire, it is fair to acknowledge that I am a reflective learner in the sense that when I am in a class that has minimal time for me to think about the concepts being taught, it is imperative that I have to compensate for the lack of the same during my studies. This is with essence that I do not directly study to memorize concepts, I periodically stop to make sense of the ideas learnt and think of the possible practical solutions of the concepts as determined for this reason. I always find myself writing short notes which I later use during my extra studies.

Reflective learning helps students to take a step back to their learning experiences in the way of developing critical thinking skills that are important in improving their future output by analyzing their experiences. As a result, this kind of learning helps students to form the surface to comprehensive education that includes a range of activities and personal development planning (Cox, 2013).

Intuitive Learner

I tend to have a huge preference for intuitive learning. In this kind of learning, I am always faced with significant challenges when I learn about new concepts, and I tend to be hugely practical and extremely sensitive with a high degree of establishing security when dealing with issues. From the questionnaire, I realized that I tend to avoid most of analytical and orderly problem solving and spend most of my time trying to come up with field-practice activities that in some ways limit when in class that demands a broad base way of acquisition of conceptual knowledge. Moreover, upon evaluation of my intuitive form of learning, I know why I tend to need more time, patience and instructional help to integrate theories adequately and consistently.

Visual Learner

I tend to have a moderate preference for visual learning which gives me the opportunity to learn and adopt in an environment that may fail to address access to visual learning though a valuable amount of time may be required for me to adapt. In this kind of learning, we tend to remember what we perceive such as diagrams, flow charts, timelines, films, demonstrations among others. Written words are seen, but the brain tends to translate them as spoken.

In most educational set ups, presentation of visual data is always minimal with learners having to listen to the lectures, read materials from the boards, books, and handouts as such most visual learners are likely to miss out on most class activities. To compensate for this loss, visual learners tend to find the schematic presentation of concepts and other visual representations that are hugely verbal. This nature of learning also requires us to make a concept map by listing key points, putting them in boxes or circles, and drawing lines with arrows between concepts to show connections.

Global and Sequential Learner

From the results, I am a somewhat global and sequential learner in that I tend to gain an understanding of concepts in a successive step following a logical framework from the previous ones. Consequently, I tend to have a way of learning to significant jumps by absorbing information without any form of random connections.

I tend to benefit from the fact that most of the college learning are sequential in which most instructors tend to have a linear pattern on how knowledge is imparted to students this way, I take a considerable amount of time understanding the lectures outline to organize my studies logically. As a learner, I have this inherent global learning nature that helps me realize the need for a bigger picture of the subject matter before going to the details, and such helps in sporadic learning of concept which may be time-consuming and saving once you can relate the concepts.

References

Cox, M. (2013). Kolb learning styles presentation [Video file]. https://youtu.be/15P03jFB55EKnowles, M. S. (1962) A History of the adult education movement in the USA, New York: Krieger. A revised edition was published in 1977.

Soloman, B. A., & Felder, R. M. (n.d.) Index of learning styles questionnaire. North Carolina State University. http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningastyles/ilsweb.html