Identifying Multiple Intelligences & Learning Styles

I use this lesson plan with any technical audience. Technical people always think they're just like everyone else, and it's a surprise to them to see the variety of learning styles and intelligences in the room.

One pitfall in Exercises 2 and 3: The students protest that they're guessing at their significant others' intelligences and learning styles, and adults (especially usability engineers) also point out that there aren't enough data points for the results to be statistically significant.

Both statements are true, but I still find that the differences between the significant-other data and the student data are dramatic, which may indicate that the real data would be even more different than the guessed data. Also, at some point I'll collate the results from all the classes I've done using the tests and see if the data say what I think they say.

I added Exercise 6 after a few years of teaching this lesson. It really wakes the students up and the results are usually amusing.

Lesson Plan

Major Concept

Writers often assume that their readers are the same as they are, with the same reading levels, backgrounds, and approaches and interests in the material. However, this is often not the case.

Generalizations

To find out who the audience really is, you must collect information about your readers.

Objectives

Cognitive

• Students will be given information about their own learning styles and intelligences.
• Students will find out that many people do not share their LSs and MIs.

Behavioral

Students will stop assuming that the audience for a piece is the same as themselves.

Materials

Handout and questionnaire on multiple intelligences:

http://www.accelerated-learning.net/multiple.htm

http://www.accelerated-learning.net/learning_test.html

Questionnaire and handout on learning styles:

http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/vark.htm

Go to “Questionnaire” and then the link “download form” for a printable version.

Click Helpsheets for detailed information.

Procedures

Exercise 1. Find Your Learning Styles and Intelligences

Put up multiple-intelligences and learning-style matrixes on the blackboard.

For “Multiple Intelligences”:

• Linguistic
• Musical
• Logical-mathematical
• Spatial (art, sculpture)
• Bodily-kinesthetic (sports, surgery, physical therapy)
• Interpersonal
• Intrapersonal
• Naturalist

For learning styles:

• Visual
• Aural
• Read/Write
• Kinesthetic
• Multiple

Exercise 2. Introduce Multiple Intelligences

Explain that “multiple intelligences” was defined by Howard Gardner because he saw that many students’ talents were going unrecognized and these students were unenthusiastic about going to school and in some cases failing.

Learning styles are similar but not the same. “We take information in differently from one another: some people are more visual, some are more aural, some are kinesthetic learners.”

Hand out the questionnaire. Ask the students to fill out and add up the numbers for themselves. Ask them to do it again for someone who is important to them—a friend, a relative, a girlfriend or boyfriend.

Multiple intelligences (talents) questionnaire: 15 minutes for own test, 5 minutes for significant other’s test.

Exercise 3. Introduce Learning Styles

Learning style questionnaire: 15 minutes, for own test, 5 minutes for significant other’s test.

Exercise 4. Compare Intelligences and Learning Styles

When they finish the two questionnaires, ask them to

• Fill in the “Who Are You?” form and hand it in. Note: Teacher must keep track of talents for team assignments.
• Put stars or check marks for themselves and their significant others in the appropriate boxes on the board.

Exercise 5. What Does This Mean?

Ask: How similar are the members of this class to their significant others? What do you think this means in terms of writing for an audience? 5 minutes.

Best answer: After staring at the clusters on the blackboard, one student said, "It looks like we need to sing to them."

Exercise 6. Try Writing for a Different Intelligence

Divide the class into six teams. Pass around a hat or box containing the various intelligences on strips of paper or cards (note: the Word version has a table of intelligences you can print out). Ask each team to pick from the hat. The assignment is to teach a peer how to write a letter using the intelligence the team picked. 20 minutes.

Discussion

How hard was it to use a different intelligence than usual?

Did the intelligence lend itself to the assignment (how to write a letter)?

What else do we have to find out about the potential audience? [Possible answers]

• English as a second language.
• Education level as a rough estimate of reading level or tolerance for reading
• “Known to new”—what do the readers/users already know?
• Computer/engineering/domain experience
• What would interest readers/users?

How do we find out about our audience for sure?

Answer: Audience analysis techniques such as anthropological studies, questionnaires, interviews, observations, usability tests.

Timing: 1 hour.

Click here for a PDF of the cards (with the fancy fonts).

Reinforcement and Assessment

Reinforcement

When doing oral presentations in particular, students will be reminded that audiences require multiple modes.

Assessment

Papers and the final will be checked for awareness of audience.

Sample student responses

Student 1: I was aware of my effective learning styles but I never graded or compared them. At the end of the evaluation, I discovered that I have equally strong visual, musical, and mathematical/logical learning styles.

Student 2: Exploring the theory of multiple intelligences was helpful to me in determining my strength. In this session, I reassess my strength and weakness, and try to build on my strength while trying to improve on the areas that I know that I am weak. In this session I adopted the words of Gardner and my watch word “it’s not how smart you are but how you are smart.” I believe this matters a lot in life. The knowledge I gain in this seasion also help me to consolidate in my major –Engineering Tech- which is practicals oriented.

Student 3: During the second class period, we did an exercise related with intelligence types. An intelligence type is simply a means of determining ways that people retain information best. The exercise required that each class group was to think of some creative ways to present the steps for writing a business letter to somebody, based upon their intelligence type.

Some examples are as follows:

This exercise made me realize that the more ways a topic is presented to an audience, the more effective a presentation may be. If a topic is being presented and a speaker shows a picture or diagram, along with stating facts or instructions, and also provides handouts, a larger amount of an audience will understand the material. Basically, if everybody learns something differently and a topic is presented with several learning types in mind, everybody in the audience should be able to pick up something using at least one of the methods.