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The letter of the law

Is there a link between students with a preference for a read-write learning style (on the VARK scale) and academic success on the Legal Practice Course?

Sarah Allen
Oxford Institute of Legal Practice

I lecture at the Oxford Institute of Legal Practice and recently completed the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education (PCTHE). During this course I became interested in learning styles. Different aspects of a student’s learning style include whether they prefer working on their own or in groups, physical conditions under which they work best eg temperature, light, time of day, and classifications of thinkers into reflectors, theorists etc.

At one PCTHE seminar I attended, each participant completed a learning styles questionnaire which focused on modality preferences (how a person prefers to receive and transmit information). The seminar was attended by lecturers from across the disciplines and the results were equally diverse. However, the three of us who taught the Legal Practice Course (a vocational course, training students intending to become solicitors) all had the same modality preference; for the written word (characterised as R on the VARK scale).

VARK preferences

• V isual: diagrams, pictures, use of colour, symbols and spatial arrangements
• A ural: listening and discussing
• R ead/Write: reading written materials, making detailed written notes or lists
• K inesthetic: learning by doing

The seminar results were reinforced by my own experience of life in practice, where the vast majority of a trainee solicitor’s time will be spent reading and identifying the key points from large quantities of written information. I decided to investigate whether there was any connection between the study and practice of law and a read/write preference for the intake and output of information.

A word of warning – the VARK questionnaire has yet to be statistically validated, which means that the analysis of any data collected using the questionnaire is necessarily limited. However, in the words of its authors, the questionnaire can still be used to promote “ active reflection by students on their learning activities”. I would argue that the questionnaire also promotes such reflection on the part of teaching staff.

I asked groups of my students to complete the questionnaire at the end of their classes. I obtained 70 responses in total but since the statistical properties of the data are limited, the number of responses are not as important as the reflection by teacher and student on the results.

VARK questionnaire

Example question

You are staying in a hotel and have a rental car. You would like to visit friends whose address/location you do not know. You would like them to:

	draw you a map on paper or provide a map from the internet.
	tell you the directions.
	write down the directions (without a map).
	collect you from the hotel in a car.

Although there are only four different preferences on the VARK scale, there are 23 different permutations of preferences. This is because within each single preference a person can have a mild, strong or very strong preference for that mode. In addition, it is possible to be multi-modal, with any combination of the preferences (eg AR, VRK or even all four (VARK)). Students who are multi-modal often need to process information in more than one mode in order for learning to occur.

Accompanying the questionnaire are various study skills sheets – one for each “mode” together with a fifth help sheet for those who are “multi-modal”. These contain study tips and advice based on the particular preference to which they relate. For example, a student who has a single A preference is advised to dictate their revision notes onto tape and then listen to them.

My research revealed the following:

• 37% of students surveyed were single preference; 63% of students were multi-modal.
• R was the most popular single preference, by some margin. In fact, R was almost twice as popular as the next most popular single preference (K).
• 70% of students had some R in their profile (10 out of the 23 possible different modal combinations include some R).

However, the proportion of students with a single R preference (17%) was much lower than my experience in the PCTHE seminar led me to expect. I compared my results with the online survey, completed by over 30,000 participants. Participants in the survey on the VARK website (details below) are a mixture of students and teachers from a range of disciplines. More students in my survey had some R in their profile than in the online survey. The percentage of those in the online survey with a single preference for R was also lower than the data for my law students. Furthermore, as can be seen from the pie chart, in the online survey the dominant single preference was not R, but K.

The pie chart reflects data from online VARK questionnaire, not my own survey, and is reproduced from the VARK website

So, although my research did not reveal as strong an R bias amongst my students as I had predicted, it does seem probable, based on the comparison with the online data, that these students are still more R than the “norm”.

One alternative explanation for the R correlation being identified with my seminar colleagues, but not so much with the students, could be found in the online survey which reveals that significant differences are shown between faculty and students in the R and K dimensions of VARK. According to this data, faculty tend to have more R, whereas students have more K. However, at the seminar, lecturers from many disciplines produced a large divergence of preferences, so this is not a complete answer.

That the connection is more likely to be related to the subject itself, ie the study of law, is reinforced by an analysis of data on the VARK website which notes the existence of disciplinary differences and in particular that law students and faculty usually have larger proportions of R than in some other areas.

The second stage of my research was to investigate whether there was any correlation between an R preference and exam results. No easy correlation could be found.

Although the top 13 students surveyed all had R within their profile, only four of these had a single preference for R; the majority in this bracket being VARK. The student with the weakest performance also had a strong R score! Indeed there were as many single R preference students in the bottom 10 students surveyed as in the equivalent top-performing sector.

Impact on my teaching practice

My research did demonstrate that the VARK questionnaire has two functions. First, it causes students to reflect on their own learning strategies and encourages them to adopt study strategies favoured by their modality preference. Secondly, it raises tutors’ awareness of the existence of different learning styles, with a view to influencing choice of teaching methods on the course.

The questionnaire has provided me with a valuable tool for use in one-to-one counselling for academic support, advice on study techniques etc. However, Fleming and Mills write:

“to assist one student with information about modal preference is not as effective as increasing the sensitivity of one professor to the potential for modal diversity within a class”.

I believe it is important to take account of different modality preferences when designing the teaching methods to be used on a course. Use of the questionnaire amongst staff can heighten awareness of the issue of differing learning styles.

It may not always be easy to think in another mode if your preferences do not support it. Therefore it is useful to have ways in which good practice can be disseminated and ideas shared. We do this through weekly team meetings. Each week a different tutor is responsible for the session design. In the meetings the proposed delivery methods are discussed and expanded upon. This helps to ensure that the students are exposed to as wide a range of modes of teaching and learning as possible.

The importance of modality differences was brought home to me in one session earlier this year. The students had been set background reading from the textbook, had received a lecture on the topic and then attended a seminar. With hindsight, these activities catered variously for those with R, A and K preferences. At the end of the seminar, a student approached me and said that she remained confused about the procedural aspects of the topic. On the spur of the moment, I drew a flow diagram on the nearest whiteboard and talked her through it. The student was delighted and eagerly copied it down. It was clear that she “got it” immediately. I made a note of what I had drawn and then used the diagram in each of my subsequent classes later that week. I also made copies of the diagram for colleagues who were also teaching that session. The student concerned did not complete the VARK questionnaire but I would surmise that she either has a single V preference or is multi-modal involving a V preference and needed the information in a V format before she could fully grasp it.

The finding that there are diverse modality preferences amongst our students has reinforced the belief that it is important to use a variety of modes when designing and delivering courses. It has underlined the need to think creatively when faced with a student who does not understand, and try an alternative approach. And it has encouraged me that the sharing of ideas and teaching methods amongst other lecturing staff is of paramount importance.

In conclusion, the optimum approach is two-pronged: an awareness on the part of teaching staff of the existence of a variety of differing learning styles (in particular here, modality preferences), coupled with the student himself or herself taking responsibility for their own learning by being aware of their own preferences and learning style. I personally believe this is important since in practice trainee solicitors will not have information presented to them in a number of different formats but may have to cope with the one which is being offered. It therefore helps students if they can develop strategies for dealing with this.

Further questions arise out of the study which it would be interesting to research in the future. Given that the author of the questionnaire asserts that experiences of work can change a person’s VARK profile, would the students’ profiles change if we redid the tests in, say, three years, when the participants had completed their training? How much is ingrained, and how much is learned? Is there a link between modality preference and choice of first degree? If so, does the study of the discipline shape the modality preference or does the learning preference influence the subject choice in the first place?

For those interested in administering the questionnaire amongst their own students, lots of useful information and analyses, together with copies of the questionnaire and helpsheets, can be downloaded for free from www.vark-learn.com. There are of course other learning style questionnaires which look at different aspects of students’ learning styles other than merely modality preference.

Reference

• Fleming, ND and Mills, C (1992) Not Another Inventory, Rather a Catalyst for Reflection, To Improve the Academy, Vol 11, page 137