Visual Learners-2

If you are a visual learner, like myself, it means you learn and process information through pictures. You are often the person who sees the movie playing in your head when you read a book, and the one who has to see something or be able to picture it in your head to really understand it. Fortunately for you, the education system is arguably most geared toward teaching our learning type, given the heavy emphasis on reading assignments and PPTs. If you've found yourself struggling academically during the pandemic, it might be because the standard teaching style has skewed slightly toward a more auditory learner. Regardless, really understanding what it means to be a visual learner and studying in a way that plays to our strengths can make learning easier and more enjoyable. But first, let's make sure you are in a space that can maximize your learning environment: 

 

Learning Suggestions for Visual Learners

  • Write your own practice test. When you make your own practice test Links to an external site., you get to see the relevant test information right in front of you, which is a big help for visual learners. Use study guides, chapter notes, and relevant class assignments to put your original practice test together.
  • Watch videos: This is a good way to see a visualization of a concept.
  • Visualization: When reviewing your notes, small section by section go through and close your eyes. Try to visualize what is written on the paper you were just looking at. Read the words in your visualization like you would read the words on the paper. This is really powerful. In the same way, you can visualize what the paragraph or lesson is explaining. Visualization for visual learners is not just a clever word association; it's absolutely essential.
  • Print it: Ask for handouts if in person or print it off if it's a remote assignment. Seeing it on paper makes it easier for your brain to process it and can make lectures easier to follow- especially for visual learners since lectures are auditory.
  • Use flashcards: Flashcards are a good way to test your understanding and recall. How you organize them will be based on if the 'web' or 'outline' note taking approach works best for you. Since you are an auditory learner, flashcards are a great way to give yourself a starting point, and then allow you to talk through the concepts on the other side. Making flashcards for vocab words are straight forward, but what about when you need to study something more complex than that? Watch the brief video below on making flashcards.

 

Notetaking

More on this in the notetaking section. Be sure to take notes in the way determined to be best fit for you according to the bedroom exercise. However, there are some things you want to do regardless since you are a visual learner:

  • Make outlines. Outlines are an excellent organizational tool for the visual learner. In an outline, you can structure a large amount of information using headings, subheadings, and bullet points. This will help structure the information in your brain.
  • Draw it out: write out timelines, processes, etc into charts, graphs, or any other type of visual/picture that helps demonstrate the concept. It doesn't need to be pretty. The point is just for it to trigger the memory in your brain and to help you understand the information.
  • Mark up your notes with highlighters, underlines, and other visual markings (including color if you learn best with color): Do NOT just highlight everything. Highlighting something does nothing to help you learn it. It is only there to remind you of a point to keep coming back to. Stars, underlining, arrows, exclamation marks, etc. are most effectively used when they are helping to explain the relationship between the words. 
  • Incorporate white space in your notes. White space is important for visual learners. When too much information is crammed together, it becomes difficult to read. Think of white space as an organizational tool like any other and use it to separate information in your notes.

As with all learning types:

  • Take your notes and make flashcards in color/black & white and web vs outline form based on the bedroom exercise.
  • Review your notes as soon as you can after class is over. This will help firm up the ideas and concepts in your mind. Also, have you ever come back to notes later, looked them over, and thought, "What does this even mean?". You've forgotten all your abbreviations, comments, etc. Reading notes over after you've written them (try within an hour) will help that as well. 
  • Study for only about 25 minutes and take a 5 minute break before going back. This will help your brain work most efficiently. Research also shows that taking a nap after studying or studying right before bed helps solidify the information studied and help move it from short term to long term memory.
  • Do not listen to music while studying, and if you absolutely insist, then listen to music that is instrumental only.