 So, we begin today's session. These are the things that I am going to talk to you about. That is, we will try to understand first what is the learning process. What is learning? I am a psychologist as Professor Kripal said. So, learning is a classic concept in psychology. So, I will briefly talk about what is learning and what do we mean by the learning process. What are learning styles of students? What can be our teaching styles and what is our role as teachers? How can we cater to those styles and how to avoid our own personal biases when we are teaching students? We should not use predominantly a singular style because there are going to be a number of styles which are being practiced by students. So, we will talk of implications for teaching. So, this is the overview that we will be looking at. Let us begin with what is learning all about. A psychology text would define learning very simply as a process of change due to practice or experience. So, whenever and this change should be relatively permanent. Unless it is relatively permanent, it is not change. So, when we use the word learning, that would mean that some change has occurred in the person due to some kind of experience with that object, with that issue, with that concept. And that change becomes relatively permanent. When I am using the word relatively permanent, I would also then imply that learning is linked very closely to memory. You cannot separate the two. However, when I use the word memory, a layman would fail or a teacher would fail who is not a psychologist. That memory would be wrote memory trying to mug up something by rehearsing a particular concept over and over again and then trying to store it in your storehouse. So, memory works like a computer. Learning is a part of memory in the sense that just like in memory, there are two steps involved over here. That is the first is reception of the input. Now, this reception in learning can be external, it can be internal. When I say external, that means what you are seeing here, what you are hearing that I am saying is external input. But what is internal input? Many of you are thinking in your minds simultaneously about what I am saying and how you are relating it to what happened inside a classroom and how students memorize and learn. So, you are trying to even think internally about the learning process. So, that is also reception internally. So, that you are able to retain it somewhere. So, you are trying to elaborate on the concepts mentally of what is going on inside the classroom. So, when I use the word reception, it is both external and internal. Very often, there will be no external inputs. There can just be internal inputs. Like you just sit down and think about something. In that process, also you are learning something because you are using intuition, hunch in understanding the particular concept. So, you can have an internal kind of input also. And the processing occurring when I am using the word processing, it would primarily mean putting it very explicitly. Processing for a student may mean repeating the window. So, you have seen little children who repeat the window sink song inside a class or nursery rhyme inside a class over and over again. Or they are made to say the table is over and over again. So, the processing is very obvious. That if you repeat something over and over again, you tend to retain it. As we grow older, we may not do it so explicitly. But we also, we may do it internally. We are processing that information. So, any information which is processed in some manner or the other, it could be through paraphrasing, it could be through intuitive thinking. It is your processing that information. And once that process is processed, it is retained in your storehouse. That is memory. And whenever necessary, you should be able to retrieve it or bring it out. So, just as the computer works, our memory also works in the same way that there is an input. There is a processing. There is a storehouse. And when necessary, you will retrieve it. Now the question arises, why is it that we don't, we are not able to retrieve it on time? I am not going to do it forgetting. Forgetting is different from retrieval. You are sometimes not, you know, you may have kept a pen somewhere. And you know that you have kept it somewhere, but you are not able to get it. Why don't you get it? It's because you have stored in memory somewhere, but you have stored it in the wrong file. If you are storing in a wrong file, you have to search that file. That searching process takes a long time. So, when you are having a bad suddenly, remember, aha, I kept it there. Now I remember. So, you pull it out from that memory. It's there in the memory, but it's stored incorrectly. So, when you are storing information, you have to store it in the right file. So, just as, say for example, in a library, there are classification systems. In a computer, there are files and folders and sub-directories and directories and so on and so forth. The whole concept of computerization is based on the concept of memory. And learning and memory are very, very closely linked to one another. So, I thought, I also thought, talk a little bit over here about memory, because learning involves these two steps of the memory process. When I use the word style, learning style, some consistent mechanism of responding or learning. We also use words like personality style and using your learning style. Anything which is consistent becomes a style. And in the context of learning, the way in which we take the input and the way in which we process it predominantly becomes a style. So, the word learning style has to be consistent way of responding to and using stimuli in the context of learning. So, say for example, but you may say, why is it that teachers lecture so much? Why don't they show schools? What does it mean? The person has a predominantly visual style of learning. Is able to retain information if you show the person what's been taught while they talk about it. So, the usage of multiple methods of teaching, instead of using just one style. Little children remember what they saw on the television, but don't remember what's taught inside the classroom. Why? That's because they're using visual learning more than auditory learning. And for little children, visual styles are more predominant. As you go older, you learn to use both those styles well. But still, a particular style more predominant will come back to various kinds of styles. So, it classifies the students according to where they fit on a scale, measuring the way of receiving and processing information. I gave you a scale or an inventory to measure your style. Similarly, there are hundreds of learning style inventory scales questionnaire to map a student's learning style. And that's why it's written over here that you can classify a person's style by using these inventories. So, in psychology, when we're using a particular term, if I were to just say learning style, it would appear to be very abstract. How do I tap style? Unlike an engineering, where you can measure things. In psychology, also we measure things by questionnaires and scales. And similarly, we can tap or measure learning styles through various scales of measurement. And that's why the second point indicates that I can measure or map those styles. So, you'll ask me, but in a class, no, I can't do it. How do I find out what are the styles of my students? There will be no need to do it, however. But this particular session is finally giving you an exposure to what could be various styles that a student uses. If you're aware of it, you will adapt your teaching styles accordingly. So, I'm 100% sure that you will not go to your class and say, now come on, let's measure your learning style. And I'm going to cater to your learning style. That's not going to happen. But the very fact of having a session on learning style implies that it will give you an exposure to what could be the style that the students inside the classroom use. And that will help you in developing the way in which you teach inside the classroom. For the learning style, there should be a teaching style also. A synonymous teaching style. So, we will look at what could be the various teaching styles that we can use to cater to the learning styles of students. So, teaching style model classifies methods of instruction on the basis of how well they address the learning style of the student. However, it would be erroneous to say that every learning style would have a corresponding teaching style. Usually, teaching styles, we try to mix many styles together when we are teaching. That is a better style. And we try to generate or try to cater to as many students as possible. There is some literature which says that in engineering education particularly, the predominant learning style is concrete experimentation. And for higher order courses, there are some examples of chemical engineering courses which they say you may need the abstract style more. So, there may be certain types of courses where concrete styles are more important, certain courses where abstract thinking is more important. So, we will look at those things as well. So, what is our role as teachers? One thing they have to recognize, no two people are identical. So, obviously all students are different in a classroom. Even identical students are not identical. They may look alike, but there is sufficient literature and psychologists will say that the personalities may not be identical. The environment may have some role to play. So, you cannot expect that all students in the class would have the same kind of learning style. We have to recognize the fact that there are individual differences and you are using one mechanism to teach. So, everybody is not going to absorb everything that has been taught inside the classroom equitably. There are going to be differences and if they get bored in course, I am using the word bored. That is, you are not able to fulfill some of their learning styles or meet up to their learning styles. They may get bored again in course. If they get bored, they may perform badly. Some of them may even give up. You heard of cases where students after one year of engineering education say, I can't do it. It's not my cup of tea. It's because there has been a kind of a mismatch between many things. The needs and the goals have not matched with engineering education or maybe the style of the teacher doesn't match with the way in which they are able to take information. Because there will be other students who are doing very well in that course. But there will be some who are not doing too well in that course. And then they will give up engineering education midway. So, you have to be a little careful of some of the outcomes of this mismatch of learning and teaching styles. Some students may perform badly, one year is all. Students may do very well in one course but not in the other. Because one course requires complete learning and the other one requires abstract learning and the student's style may be predominantly concrete. And so, you are not able to do very well in the abstract learning course. So, you cannot come to a conclusion that the student is a bad student. This student has a particular style of learning and there could be that reason that is influencing the learning process. So, there can be some negative outcomes of the way in which we teach inside a classroom. So, addressing these learning styles with a teaching plan becomes very, very important. And that's why it's essential for us to understand this learning process. Of course, making students aware of various learning styles and help them choose suitable ones. I don't know whether we will be able to do this because there are hundreds of stones inside a classroom. And whether we will be able to identify everybody's learning styles and whether we will be able to help them. But if we are able to make them aware, we can see the last one is very important that is self-directed learning. Help students understand the learning styles and develop ways of coping with the ways in which the classroom teacher is teaching inside the classroom. So, they can direct that energy in such a way that they learn to pick up cues which suit their needs and their goals. So, self-directed learning becomes very, very important in the role of teachers. Plenty that I gave you is based on this model of cope and fry. This was the earliest model given on learning styles which talks about all kinds of learning styles. One is concrete experience that's CE. The second is observation and reflection. The third is abstract concepts and the fourth is testing in new situations. If you look that it is circular and the arrows point in the direction which shows that learning is a continuous process. It never stops. We are learning because if we were, if human being stopped learning, this world would come to a standstill. It's not happening. So, that means that learning is a continuous process. So, this model is based on this first assumption that learning is continuous. It's based on the second assumption that learning is based on one's needs and goals. Everybody has different needs and everybody has different goals and that's why somebody takes up engineering, somebody takes up commerce and somebody takes up science and somebody wants to pursue only mathematics and so on and so forth. So, everybody chooses according to their goals and their needs, what they want to learn. One thing that it is based on is that because it's based on needs and wants and because it's a continuous process, learning also varied or the style of learning can also vary from one situation to another. That is our needs and wants may change with time. If it's continuous, our needs and wants should change with time. That's why we keep on learning. So, because our goals may change with time, our learning style may also change. It doesn't imply that once a learning style has been formed, it remains our learning style forever. That doesn't really happen. Based on this, you will see that there are four kinds of abilities that one develops. Now, this is based on goal, this model. One is concrete experience abilities. What does concrete experience abilities means that once you have experienced something, you have an experience with something, you want to see what its outcome would be. So, you try to understand the outcome based on a particular type of cause. You see that all the four are interlinked. After having done that, you want to reflect upon whether the same outcome will be experienced If the same situation recurs again, whether there is going to be the same outcome, reflective observation. You have made a particular observation. Then you reflect on whether the same cause of a relationship is going to hold true when the same situation occurs again. Having done that, you start wondering whether you can extend that or in scientific language, generalize this cause of a relationship to other situations. So, abstract conceptualization. Now, you have not had any experience with it. What are you doing? You are developing principles in the third step. That's how principles develop. Abstract conceptualization. You test those principles by experimenting it. Generalization has occurred. You have tested what began in the first step in the last one. In a sense, these four abilities are interlinked with one another. I will describe to you an experiment on learning which involves these steps. Have you all heard about a physiologist by the name Pavlov? Some of you may have learned. He heard of Pavlov. He was a Nobel laureate in the 1900s. He was a physiologist, not a psychologist. But the entire research and learning began with his experiments. He was studying that was concrete experience. He was studying the digestive system of dogs in his laboratory. Now, this is concrete experience. He noticed that dogs start salivating even before the food is given to them. Obviously, salivation should occur when food is there. But dogs started salivating without the food being there. So, that was some experience that he had. He started wondering, reflective observation, why this happens. He found that there could be, one of the reasons could be that the dogs have started recognizing the attendant who brings the food. And the moment he sees the attendant starts salivating. So, abstract conceptualization, there is something in our brain. Some association has occurred between a natural stimulus that is food and an unnatural stimulus that is the attendant. So, he gave us the concept of conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus where the conditioned stimulus is eliciting an unconditioned response, which is now that is salivation. Like unconditioned response, I mean it is a natural response. And then he did active experimentation on the dogs where he actually run the belt before food was given and he saw the dog started salivating and the sound of the bell. It is as simple as you notice your child, I have noticed it. When the child is little and you have to feed the child, obviously you crush the food in the small pieces or you put it in a mixer so that the child will be solid. The child starts jumping when it hears the sound of the mixer hoping that the food is forthcoming. It is as simple as that. So, learning is occurred and the association is actually formed with a mixer and not with the food. The food obviously is coming. So, the excitement begins with the sound and that is what actually this whole process, these four steps that we gave is based on this that we have some experience in our everyday life or in observations. Sometimes we even experiment and in experimentation because actually Pavlov was doing some experiments on the digestive system and not on learning and then he saw that he developed a whole theory of classical conditioning on learning. So, that is how learning actually occurs and Kohl gave these four steps of learning. Based on these styles of Kohl, based on these concepts of Kohl, four styles have been generated and I have written these, Converger, Diverger, Assimilator and Accommodator. The Converger, the mix of abstract conceptualization and active experimentation. What does the Converger do or how does he behave? What is the kind of learning style? Such individuals have a strong practical application of ideas. The Convergers are very good at practical applications. So, do not teach them too much theory. They may not be able to or they are not interested. They may get bored if you teach Convergers too much of theories. If you teach them how to apply these theories, they will be able to assimilate the theory better. So, maybe you can begin with the application and then go to the theory. That is what it means. The word Converge means that they are able to converge on one particular outcome or solution to a problem. The Diverger on the other hand is based on a concept given in intelligence, convergent and divergent, convergent and divergent thinking or convergent and divergent intelligence. The Diverger is who is a mix of concrete experience and a reflective observation is actually very good in imaginative abilities. So, such people can, so if you give them a problem in a classroom, they will come up with many alternatives, many alternatives to solve that problem. They may eventually never solve it, but they will give you many alternatives. You can solve it in this way, this way, this way. The Converger will solve it in one best way, that he thinks, because it is practical oriented. The third kind, the assimilator, was a mix of abstract conceptualization and reflective observation who can develop good mathematical models because abstract conceptualization is very strong. Reflective observation is very strong. He is intuitive. So, can develop models. He is good at mathematical models. The accommodator, who is a mix of concrete experience and active experimentation, you will see, is basically person who solves problems intuitively. His greatest strengths also lies in, after having thought intuitively, would also do it practically, experimentation, would experiment. So, will have an idea and will do the experiment. That is the accommodator. So, all this is based on cold styles. Learning can begin at any point. Though you see that they say that concrete experience is the first step, it may not necessarily be the first step. Concrete experience will not necessarily be the first step. You can begin either with observational reflection. So, you must just, you know, you have heard of armchair thinking. They say philosophers do armchair thinking. That is, they sit down and think, why is the world like this? Or why do people lie? Or why do people not lie? Or what is justice? They sit down and think. And then they think about it after having observed it in the external world. They don't do any experimentation. And then they come up with all kinds of logical arguments about why people are just or why they are unjust. So, you can begin learning and any of these four. That is what Kohl was saying. It is not so essential that you have to begin with concrete experience. There is a probability that one of them is predominant in your learning process. So, this is what we are looking at. To another kind of model which is different from Kohl's model is the WAC model. WAC is visual learners, auditory learners and kinesthetic learners. Although those may not be important for classroom purposes. We are not talking about it. Even kinesthetic is not all that important, but to some extent there is. However, there is some experimentation even on orders. Smell. They say that with certain types of smell, people learn better. However, that is still not established. We will not talk about it. Mostly literature talks about the WAC model. Visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Visual learners? Are they ones who learn better by seeing? Obviously, the term indicates that they learn better when you show them something. You demonstrate something to them. You show them graphs. You show them illustrations. In a sense, even words are visual. You see words. So there is a difference between visual linguistic and visual spatial. When I say visual linguistic, they are the ones who will learn when they see, read the words. This is visual linguistic. You are seeing here what is being written. I could just switch this off and just talk. The effect will be different. It will be entirely auditory. But at the moment, it is visual linguistic. When I showed you Cohen's model, which was the drawing, the diagram, it is visual spatial. There are the words. There can be a flow chart. There can be a diagram. There can be a bar chart. There can be a pie diagram. There can be visual spatial. So when you are writing a thesis or when you are writing a report, you tend to produce your data both visually, that is you make your graphs and you describe it also in written form. If you are predominantly visual, you would learn better if something is shown to you. The teacher demonstrated inside the classroom. It shows you a film. Why do we use films for teaching? It is because visual, it caters to visual learners. Auditory learners, actually visual learners may get bored if the lecture is only auditory. So you need to use auditory visual aids in teaching. That is why we use auditory visual. So auditory learners are the ones who learn better on hearing. The hearing ability is well developed. There are the ones who even students who are auditory learners are the ones who read aloud. Many of you are doing it that when you want to detail something, you read aloud, you read to yourself. They are the auditory learners. Because they feel that they can detail better if they listen to what they are saying. There are the ones who will learn better if they are allowed to teach someone else. The best way of learning is teaching. There are many things which you teach, many courses which you teach in your colleges which you will never have studied. At least I have done that. And I find that teaching, auditory, teaching is the best mechanism. Even visual in a sense. Because I write down all my notes. Once written, it is here. I use visual and auditory. So if I teach it to somebody, I listen to what I am teaching and I can make out this spectacular. So auditory learners would be able to learn better if given an opportunity to teach others. So you can give little projects to students and say, okay, you teach the other students these concepts if you are better in this. So auditory learners would do a better job in that. The kinesthetic learners are the ones who fidget the most in the classroom. The other ones will be shaking their legs, doodling with their pens. It doesn't mean that they are not learning. Sometimes the teacher feels that if somebody is shaking their leg, he is not interested. For them, movement is important. So kinesthetic learners, movement, touch, feel becomes very important. So they will highlight things that are important. They find are important to retain. They will use highlighters. They will use markers. They will write down the notes. Many of you will just listen. You have the notes in front of you right now. So you are listening. Others may be adding all the notes written in that notes. They are the movement kinesthetic ones. They retain better if they write it out. So movement then becomes important. So this is known as the WAC model, the visual auditory and kinesthetic model. Now we will go to MVTI. MVTI is basically the full form is bias-bricks type indicator. This is an indicator of a set of learning styles. Actually it is a personality tool. But there is a very strong relationship between personality and learning. So the whole tool is based on union concept. Carl Jung was a successor of Sigmund Freud if you have heard of Sigmund Freud and Jung gave personality theories and Jung gave a concept of extroversion and introversion. And based on that concept, Briggs developed a tool which is today very very famously used as the MVTI tool. So if you want to go to a corporate sector and want to be recruited, they will give you an MVTI. It is as powerful as that. So MVTI is a very powerful tool to measure your personality. But here we try to understand it in the context of learning styles. There are four types of styles that we can derive from MVTI. Extroversion and introversion is the first one. Sensing versus intuition is the second one. King versus feeling is the third one. Judging versus perceptive is the fourth one. As the word extroversion means, there is something external. Introversion, internal. Probably we will link it up with personality. Extroverts would be those who like to be in groups. They like to socialize. They like to talk to people and so on and so forth. Introverts are the ones who are more layman's words reserved, like to be by themselves. But how is it related to learning? In the learning process, introverts are the ones who would use reflective observation more. They are the ones who would like to think about what they are seeing on their own and develop the rules of the game. Try to understand the underlying principle. There will be a relationship between introversion and intuition. They would like to do individual projects. So if you give them group projects, they will not do very well on group projects because they can't relate to people. But they will be efficient. They can do it individually. So they will not do well in a classroom if you give them group projects. They would like to do individual projects. Extroverts, on the other hand, since they are personality types as they like to socialize, they would do better if there is some kind of collaborative learning. If they are also told to teach others, you give them group projects. So in a classroom, you can give small groups, or make them to small groups and give them little projects to do. They will learn better. So introversion and extroversion, learning styles, are based on the personality styles of extroversion and introversion. The second learning style based on MBTI is sensing versus intuition. The sensing learners are, as the word indicates, they use the senses more. So they will use visual, auditory, kinesthetic. They will use the sense organs more, sensing to learn better. So they are more organized. They learn stepwise in a linear fashion. So if you tell them, I am going to teach this in the class today, and I have broken it up in this way. They will absorb it well. In the ones who are intuitive learners, they learn better if you give them analogies. They learn by hunch. If you tell them principles more than the practice, they know the abstract, they can develop the concepts better. So intuitive learners are based on this concept of sensing versus intuitive. These are the kinds of MBTI classification. If you see that these extroversion and introversion are not too extremes, they lie on the continuum. Similarly, sensing versus intuition are not extremes. None of the learning styles are extremes. They all lie on the continuum. But that I mean to say, that you can be located anywhere on that continuum. You could be near the extremes. You could be somewhere in the middle. You could use both. This is feeling. What kind of learners are more into inductive kind of learning? Logic. Why? The question why? They want the answer to that. So they try to get answers to the question why? They think about it. So most of the things that they learn is based on some kind of logical analysis. The feeling learners are more into human values. So they are the ones who would look up to others to maybe solve the problem. And they will learn better from there. They won't that the teacher gives them group exercises. Because they feel they learn better when they are working in a group. The human element is there. So they don't reflect so much as the thinking ones. Judgingness is perceptive. The judging learners are very interesting. If you say that you have to submit a project on business date, they will do it on time. I am sure you have such students in the class. And you have other set of students. The moment the deadline comes in, man can I give it tomorrow? Can you just say, tomorrow is Saturday, Sunday. I give it to you on Monday. I slip it under your door. It's not that they are inefficient or they didn't want to do it. The perceptive learner, what they do is that they take up many things together. To solve the problem that you have given them or the project that you have given them, they want to do it in many ways. They are not sure which way they want to submit it. So the moment the deadline approaches, they want an extension because they think that they need some more time. So because they are more process oriented. The judging learners, they will be chosen a path. And they will say they are going to do a project like this. And so they need the deadline. They plan it out properly. The perceptive learners will have, I will read this, I will read that, I will read this. I will read many things and get confused. I want more time. Can you give me an extension? They are the ones who keep on asking for extensions. So that's the judgment versus perceptive. And the difference between cold and MBTI. This is largely based on personality styles. Where we are trying to apply the concept of personality in learning. And what is personality? Personality is the unique pattern of behavior. Everybody has a unique personality. No two people are the identical personality or even similar personalities. That's why we say that brothers and sisters are also not alike. But this is based on that concept of personality. And then the final one. This is entirely based on research done on engineering students. So I kept it to the last one. So these authors, Felder and Silverman, have written a paper which is a very highly cited paper in engineering education journal. Where the talk of learning styles in engineering education. They begin by setting five questions for learning styles and five questions for teaching styles. And then they try to match the two. So a bit of those questions here. The first question of how we can identify a learning style is what type of information that the student predominantly perceive. Sensory versus intuitive. Second, which sensory channel is used effectively to perceive information? Visual versus auditory. Which organization of information is the student most comfortable with? Inductive versus deductive. How does the student process the information? Actively versus reflectively. How does the student understand the information? Sequentially or globally? So he says first try to identify the learning style. I will explain all this in detail. By trying to answer these questions. And these have some kind of teaching styles also synonymously. So ask this question. What type of information is emphasized by the teacher? What is the emphasize? Abstract or conceptual? What mode of presentation do you predominantly use? Visual or auditory? How do you organize representation? Inductively or deductively? How much participation do you encourage? Do you allow students to participate in the class? Active versus passive? This is the perspective that you provide on the information that you give. It is sequential or is it global? Putting these two together. This is what Felder found. That there is a relationship between the learning style and the teaching style. Sensitive versus intuitive is related to it is actually two to the power of five. You can have as many combinations of styles. Matches of teaching and learning. Now the question arises. Can you really do it in a classroom? Because the student may be predominantly sensory, inductive, reflective, sequential. And the student may be intuitive, visual, inductive, active and sequential. Or third student may be intuitive, auditory, inductive, reflective and global. What do you do? That is all kinds of permutations and combinations. So let us try to understand what these actually mean. Point to the first one, sensory versus intuitive. The sensory learners will read facts or will look for facts. Those who use the sense organs more, they will search for facts in what is being taught in the classroom. They will look for data. They prefer experimentation. However, when it comes to solving problems as a problem solver, they are the convergers that we saw earlier of course. They will use standard tools to solve the problems. They will be quite patient with details inside the classroom. So if your lecture gets very lengthy and you keep on explaining in very simple language, they won't mind that. They will assimilate all of that. They don't get bored with those details. They are good at memorizing the facts. So road learning is also very high in that. Plan B, a little, you can say, careful and slow in the learning process. Why? Because still you are 100% sure of the facts. They are 100% sure that this is the mechanism of doing the thing. This is the correct way of doing it. They are not going to do it. So they will be absorbed it. They will not solve the problem. So they will be a little slow. Intuitors on the other hand, they prefer principles, theories. So the sensors, you could probably begin with applications. But the intuitors, because they prefer principles and theories, you can begin with principles and theories. They like information. They dislike repetition. They can get bored easily with details. So don't repeat over and over again the same point, thinking that you can, through this reversal process, make them memorize it, because they don't prefer memorization at all, like the sensory ones. They welcome complications. So if you teach complex things in the class, they enjoy that kind of teaching. They are good at grasping new concepts. They are very quick, but can get careless sometimes. They are very good with symbols. Research has however shown that when we are teaching, we are actually teaching the intuitors. That's what research tells. Why? Because we teach theory in the class. This is the biggest criticism of all engineering education. There's too much theory. We have very little of industrial experience. So there is ample evidence which suggests that in engineering education, we are actually catering more to the intuitors. We teach them more abstract things than concrete things. There's so much experimentation. We don't take them to the field, at least in the Indian education system I'm talking about. In the West, they are more in the field than in the classroom. So we are catering more to intuitors than to sensors. That's the first kind of learning style that we're talking about. The second, I said was visual and auditory. They've already done that to a certain extent, visual and auditory. Where I said that in visual, they would like pictures, diagrams, films, demonstrations. The auditory would like to have verbal explanations. The third one, inductive versus deductive. In inductive, you will go logically. From particulars to generalizations. From the small picture to the large picture. There will be a linear progression. You will move from measurement of data to rules. So theories will come in later. Laws will come in later. First the data and the measurement become important in inductive. Because there are some facts. And you can use facts to logically argue out your argument. Deductive learners, they begin by understanding the basic principles first. Then working down to the application. So they like theory more before they want to actually practice. They deduce what will happen if you apply that theory. So deductive knowledge. That's the difference between inductive and deductive learners. Active experimentation and reflective. Of course, active experimentation are the ones who are good at designing, carrying out experiments. The word active means that they actively participate in that learning process so that they learn the exercise. They can be good decision makers. They are good organizers. They organize their study material well. They work well in groups. Reflective learners on the other hand, not learn well. If there is no opportunity to think, to reflect, to introspect, to be innovative, to have your own point of view. They don't want to listen to so and so said that and so and so said that. They like to think on their own. So that's reflective. So they learn better by themselves. They are good theoreticians. They can be good mathematical modellers. So the first active experimentation are the ones who can be good designers. So in industry you need designers. You also need modellers. So you may need modellers for say for example for forecasting. People who forecast in business you may need reflective thinkers or reflective learners. People who design, who can conceptualize, who have good conceptualization skills, you may need active experimentation learners. So there is a variation. The first one is the global versus sequential one. The sequential one are the people who would like to do things in small steps. So something like what the NCRD textbooks have broken down, classroom teaching into unit 1, unit 2, unit 3, unit 4. And that's how we teach in the class also that we move from simple to complex and we'll say when we come to the class we'll say that this is what we are going to teach and we'll teach you this first and we'll teach you that for this, the second and then we'll teach you this for third and so on and so forth. That's the sequential learning. In global I can come to the class and say I'm going to teach this particular concept and I'll give global picture first of the entire concept before I break it down into smaller units. So there can be sequential learners and there can be global learners. The sequential learners will always learn very systematically, point to point because they are progressing in a linear fashion. The global ones are going to learn in fits and starts. Why? Because actually in a classroom we are following more of a sequential order than the global order from simple to complex. The global ones you tell them the complex first, they'll break it down into simple. Suddenly because we depend on intuition. How do they break down their hunch? Make intuitive leaps. So for 10 days they would just be sitting and doing nothing and suddenly they come up with some unique solution to the problem. These will learn on the basis of the various rules that you taught them. They'll solve the problem on the basis of those rules sequentially. So that's what these various types of learning styles are and related to them are similar kinds of teaching styles. So then last, how do we teach inside a classroom? First of all is of course that we have to motivate learning. How do we motivate learning? We can motivate learning by using or catering to multiple learning styles. For that I mean to say that we should... Now that we are aware of other, there can be so many learning styles. There can be intuitive thinkers in the classroom, there can be deductive learning, there can be inductive learning, there can be visual, there can be auditory, there can be kind aesthetic. So now your job is to see that you are able to motivate all these kinds of learners because if you use just one single mechanism of teaching, consistently you come to the class with your notes, you talk about something and you leave. You're not catering to. People are going to get bored, they'll be demotivated. What's going to happen? There will be absenteeism, there will be late coming in the class and all of that happens as teachers also become demotivated. If students are not motivated, teachers are also not motivated. So it has to be a reciprocal relationship. You have to motivate the learning process, so motivate them. So parallel is concrete information with abstract concepts, it all has to do with what we have done, balance practical problem solving with fundamental understanding, anchor stones to use different styles. Don't, even we have a predominant styles, but try to anchor stones to use multiple styles. Let them not be bought down by a single style because they can be or in fact it's a truth. Let's always begin with theory in the class. The learners who don't do well in theory, if they're going to get bored initially, with the theory if you simultaneously give some practical examples, you could jail well with the entire audience. The people who are interested in theory would be able to, the abstract thinkers and the concrete thinkers would be able to do well. So try to encourage use of different styles. Don't keep on lecturing inside if it's a one hour class. Give breaks. By breaks I mean maybe after some time ask a question, give them a surprise problem, ask them to give a solution in five minutes, take a break, let them think. Don't just come and continuously lecture for an hour, it gets boring. So give them little little breaks in between. So after having thought for 15 minutes maybe you can give them a question of what you thought in the last 15 minutes or ask them something. If you've thought a theory, ask them to give the application. Encourage class activities like group projects, etc. You can encourage them. Don't give them very fixed kind of problems, text book kind of problems. Give them problems when they can use reflection. So open any problem when exercises. Now you may ask, tell me that we are in an educational pattern where it cannot permit because ultimately they have to appear in examination. That's the unfortunate part that we teach students to appear for exam. We don't teach to educate them. We need to educate them. So forget the examination. Educate them. That is our job. They will appear in the examination if they are educated. Fine. But give them an opportunity to think. So give open-ended problems. Encourage group work, encourage creativity. And guide the students. Make students understand what the predominant styles are and how they can use multiple styles. It's important that they use multiple styles. So basically sum up by saying that all styles are equally effective. You cannot say that auditory is more effective than visual. Or abstract is more effective than concrete. All styles are effective. There is nothing good or bad of these styles. So no value judgment. And what is important is that you have to provide an adaptable learning environment. And you can do that by using all these multiple approaches to your teaching. Don't use a singular approach. And let students learn to adapt to these multiple ways of learning. Recognize your own style which we are trying to do so that you don't avoid bias while you are teaching. If you yourself like theory, you will teach only theory inside the classroom. That bias should not be there. And use different methods of teaching. You must remember that these learning styles are not very stable. They can change with time. People's styles do change with time. Then they can vary with the learning tasks. So you can learn a particular subject using visual cues more. You can learn either using auditory or kinesthetic more. So it's not true that every discipline, every subject, every course that they do they are going to use the same learning style. They may be different to understand that particular subject. But the learning and instruction style match. Not necessary. A mismatch can occur and there is nothing wrong in it occurring. It's bound to happen. But the mismatch should not be superior. Because the teacher may have a predominant style of teaching and the student may have a predominant style of learning and there can be a mismatch. What the teacher really needs to recognize now is that he has to use all the styles to reduce that mismatch. Mismatch is going to happen because there are going to be so many styles inside the classroom. Should one focus on the individual or should one focus on the group? Sometimes it may be necessary to focus on the individual. Sometimes it may be necessary to focus on the group. Again depending on what kind of activity you are doing in the classroom. It's an individual examination. You may have to focus on the individual and how well he has done in the exam and whether he has understood and whether you need to coach an individual more than the others. If it's a group activity, then obviously you are looking at the group. So please ask some other things. I'll stop at that. And I think his references are there. I've seen that some students talk about really very well when they are working as individuals. Because they feel, I know, discussion with their colleagues has interference. But then this is not treat desirable when they are in the work environment. So how will you make really that to understand that working in groups is not something that has interference of your own thinking or your own performance? As far as visuals also is concerned, there are two points of view that I still did not be resolved. Whether people are good at working as individuals or whether people are good when they work in groups. There are many reasons for it. When you are working as an individual, you have control over the process. You have control over yourself. When you are working in a group, there is a diffusion of responsibility. By diffusion of responsibility, you can pass the buck easily. So the interest of the decision gets lost. The rewards are shared in a group. Individual, learning is also based on rewards. There was a second theory, I always spoke to of learning in classical conditioning. There is another theory which is operant conditioning. Which says that learning is based on the amount of reinforcement that is the reward that you get from learning. And the entire principle of incentives in the workplace that is your compensation package, your fringe benefits, your perks will depend on your performance. How will you do? So you will learn and you will adapt to changes and perform well if your rewards are individual based. These days, there is this concept of a group incentive plan. That is the whole team if it performs will get equitable rewards. So we are getting into an overall entirely concept of equity theory. All those things are related to reinforcement. That is the reward and the incentive that you get. So there are going to be individual variations on that. And I think it would be unreasonable to pass any judgment that individuals perform better or groups perform better. There are going to be variations in the workplace also. So you cannot convince an individual who likes to work individually but has placed in a group in the workplace, will leave it, will be dissatisfied or will perform poorly. Okay, I think I will have to stop now. Thank you very much.