There are a couple of methods that can help you to organise information. They are as follows:
- Visual – organise ideas, concepts and information and associate them with images. It is important to use different colours, font styles (bold, italic) or font sizes in order to better express different concepts. Representing material can be done using graphical representations that group, classify, analyse information, such as:
- Mark – after you read a whole paragraph emphasises the main ideas or definitions and mark them using different highlighter colours (marked with a colour pen).
- Mind map – is a chart which helps you to visually organise information. Usually the centre of the diagram is one concept that links to other ideas.
- Concept Maps – is a chart that represents relationships between concepts (new and old).
- Tables and charts – represent data using pictures like bar, line, pie, and network.
- Spider gram –a drawing that shows a summary of facts or ideas, with the main subject in a central circle and the most important facts on lines drawn out from it
- Comics – explains an action or phenomenon by successive drawings.
- Flowchart – is a diagram to represent an algorithm or a process.
- Info graphics – uses graphics to illustrate information.
- Audio – organise information using recorded presentations, reading and repeating aloud, listening to explanations given by someone else, explaining the subject to another person, discussions in a group, inclusion in a song of the studied subject, using a ‘text to speech’ application to read a written text.
- Writing – information to be learned presented in the form of texts, such as books, manuals, reports, essays, lists or dictionaries is organised through:
- Notes – making a summary of the material helps you to memorise and easily repeat it.
- Summary – stimulates thinking and helps you to find links to other topics that you already know.
- Kinetic – organising information for learning is achieved through physical activities, practical experiments (real or simulated), role play, and different forms of arts. This learning style is based on creating real experiences instead of studying the experience of others.
A more detailed explanation of this can be found in the next chapters.
However, studies have demonstrated that using a single learning style does not produce spectacular results, but combining multiple learning styles is more beneficial for both groups and individuals. It can also be applied to a class of students. Therefore the tests for determining learning style have four scores, in order to understand the combination of learning styles.
Predominant learning style can be chosen depending on the context (e.g. studying anatomy is through reading /writing, a chemical phenomenon is by testing) or combined (using all the four styles helps for a deep understanding of a field of study) e.g. common craft (animations using simple drawings and text and spoken explanations to explain a subject) combines multiple learning styles.
Note: that the best way to learn knowledge and skills is when the learning material is shown several times in various different ways that stimulates the different senses, thus activating different parts of the brain.
