CSS site style testing

Use the links below to re-style this entire web site to see how you can change the looks of a website with CSS while leaving the content in tact.


Purple Style
gzuslivz
Rolling Navigation Menu
Ugly with Motion

HTML, CSS, Javascript

Content

Learning Styles

There are 4 core learning styles. People tend to gravitate to one as a primary learning style but in reality they learn in multiple styles. There are more learning styles, but these are the main ones.

When creating content, you should keep these styles in mind. Content could be a web page, a video, an email, etc. Learning styles isn't limited to media, it's how someone learns. Communication is essentially one entity providing information that requires learning by another entity.

Create content that takes advantage of all 4 learning styles as much as possible. With that said, people may consider some of the content to be unneccessary or 'a waste of time' but don't give in. If you really want people to learn what you're telling them, communicate that message so everyone can learn. Be inclusive in your communication.

Knowing these learning styles can help you keep your learners engaged and will help them retain the information that you're sharing. Keep your learners engaged, otherwise you're wasting your time.

4 Core Learning Styles

Visual

Visual learners are better able to retain information when it's presented to them in a graphic depiction, such as arrows, charts, diagrams, symbols, and more. Similar to how designers use visual hierarchy to emphasize specific design elements, visual learners thrive with clear pictures of information hierarchy.

Video and motion help these people learn and retain the content better. Images are also good. Animated gif's, emojis, and the like are all used to communicate visually. People who aren't visual learners may consider this a bit frivolous, 'wasting time' to make a pretty picture. In fact, lacking these important elements in your communication will leave a large portion of your learners without the information they need to help them learn.

Auditory

Auditory learners prefer listening to information that is presented to them vocally. These learners work well in group settings where vocal collaboration is present and may enjoy reading aloud to themselves, too.

Auditory learners generally prefer a well thought out story. They may, or may not be, bullit point people. Offering these learners cohesive stories and including sound effects draws them in to your content.

These people also appreciate the use of vocal inflections to help draw them into the content. Use of a monotone, dry, boring, speaking voice will push the auditory learner away from learning the content. Even dry topics can be (and should be) made interesting to keep your learners engaged.

Reading & Writing

Reading and writing learners succeed with written information on worksheets, presentations, and other text-heavy resources. These learners are note-takers and perform strongly when they can reference written text.

Providing transcripts for videos is a great way to keep these learners involved, even if your primary method of communication is with videos. Transcripts allow the reader to soak in the content in a way that best meets their learning style. Providing written information for them to review is also good. These people may take a lot of notes on your content. They may like to write on physical paper or type them in on a computer or even may want to take notes on their phone or tablet.

Remember, just because you may not learn this way, doesn't mean other people don't.

Kinesthetic

Taking a physically active role, kinesthetic learners are hands-on and thrive when engaging all of their senses during course work.

Learn by doing. That's what these people like to do. Do you remember that excersize where you had to get in a group and build something that met some criteria, but it didn't seem to relate to anything? Well, the kinesthetic learner thrived on understanding that content.

This learning style can be a challenge outside of the traditional classroom because it can be difficult to create hands-on activities when your learner is not physically in front of you. Also creating activities that don't leave people out (accessibility) can be tricky.

If you think about it, testing is a something that is hands-on and so are excersizes so incorporating that in your content can be helpful to the kinesthetic learner. Taking a test isn't a dramatically physical activity but it does involve 'doing something' which is how these learners prefer to learn.

Learning Style Summary

I'm a mixture of many of these learning styles. I'll watch a YouTube video over reading a manual any day. Sometimes I do a Google search to find what I'm looking for and text is ok. I'm probably not going to read a ton because I don't learn well that way. Just because I don't like reading doesn't mean that other people don't like it. So provide your content in a way that everyone can benefit from it.

I hope to provide more examples of each core learning type in the future, but for now, at least the reading/writing learner should understand the message that I tried to convey here. ;-)