What Is Learning - Creativity and Conversion: A Reflection of a Visual Learner

Visual Learning

Inextricably bound to an individual's perception, learning is a deeply personal aspect of the life experience. More saliently, professionally applying that which is learned in an academic environment is the greatest charge of the contemporary university student. The following inquiry explores learning from the personal perspective of a visual learner, using transformative learning theory to explore optimum channels for professional evolution of institutional learning and comprehensively reflecting on learning as a lifelong endeavor. In essence, there is no universally applicable definition for learning; it is a concept molded and characterized by the unique needs of the learner. However, crucial is it for the university student to be cognizant of his or her learning style as it will undoubtedly inform life long after graduation.

Learning: A Practical and Personal Definition

Ultimately, learning is bound to time. Every learner uses the past in order to afford more meaningful definitions and contexts for new information. Alternatively, every learner embraces new information as a means of anticipating the future.

Surface Learning and Deep Learning

Most traditional learning theories suggest that effective learning depends on connections made between new knowledge and existing knowledge. The most frequently used buzz phrases within academia, such as critical thinking and higher-level thinking, allude to advanced cognition as an act that elevates these connections from the level of mere memory to a new place; this implies that creativity exists within the most effective learning contexts. Quality of learning, then, depends wholly on the ability of the student to connect that which is new to that which is old; and yet, the anticipatory element in learning is just as crucial.

Transformative Learning Theory

Transformative learning theory (TLT) defines acquired knowledge as fundamentally mutable. Quality learning, by extension, creates meaningful changes in the lives of students by allowing them to personally embrace new experiences as more than academic lessons, but as life lessons to be connected to the past and applied to the future.

TLT implies an invaluable act of conversion as integral to the learning process (Christopher, Dunnegan, Duncan, & Paul 134). Students are not mere receptors of information, but the vehicles for transformation of knowledge.

Visual Learning

Visual learning, sometimes deemed visual-spatial learning, is one of Howard Gardner's intelligences. Implying much more than learning through the medium of sight, visual learning is a creative process that denies intelligence as a purely linear, cumulative element of the personality (West 12). While visual thinkers face difficulty learning from texts and lectures, they are often deeply creative individuals with mixed capabilities (West 12).

Synthesis: A Personal Definition of Learning

For me, learning is a process of creative conversion. New information that is conveyed through tactile activities, diagrams, participatory experiences, and graphic illustrations is most easily linked to my past experiences and converted into being mine. TLT in the classroom depends on the teachers' perceptions of learners as unique individuals with their own process of learning. Christopher, Dunnegan, Duncan, and Paul cite that "transformative learning can be fostered by including (a) teachers who are empathetic, caring, authentic, and sincere and who demonstrate a high degree of integrity; (b) learning conditions that promote a sense of safety, openness, and trust; and (c) instructional methods that support a learner-centered approach that promotes student autonomy, participation, reflection, and collaboration" (134); for me, these classroom experiences have always been the most meaningful.

A visual learner, I experience quality outcomes in the classroom through creative experience that involve and challenge my imagination. Because memory is so inextricably bound to learning, I need to purposefully create visual images for bits of information in order to make meaningful connections with new knowledge (McIlroy 170). Studying for me, by extension, is a process of not only reading texts or notes, but visualizing concepts in a way that strategically and intelligently integrates the new with the old (Northedge 11). In reflecting on my learning experiences throughout my life, including my most recent academic and professional experiences, I am well aware of the obstacles I have always faced.

Reflection on Classroom and Professional Experience

Personal reflection is not a passive action but a proactive means of assessing and categorizing that which has been experienced. In her text entitled Reflection in Learning and Professional Development, author J. Moon asserts that reflection, by definition, involves the act of anticipation (4-5). My experiences both prior to and within the course module will, ultimately, inform my professional future.

Before University: A Reflection

Always challenged by the lecture-and-drill methods of learning, I learned around age twelve that I could study most effectively by re-writing information using colored markers. Particularly with respect to the subjects in which I struggled, namely mathematics and science, spending extra time effectively mapping concepts on paper in a way that was visually stimulating could mean the difference between passing and failing. I would remember the color of the theorem or concept from my study guide and quickly be able to retrieve the rest of the related information; this was an invaluable discovery for me that carried me throughout my school career.

Because I was cognizant of my special needs, I believe that I was better prepared for university in that I was already self-motivating and transforming information to be personally applicable. An algebra equation, for instance, would mean nothing to me until I verbalized the ideas on paper and in color; this was not the way it was taught in the classroom. By extension, I was already changing and converting information to be my own prior to entry into university, as a more self-directed context for learning.

During the Course Module: A Reflection

One of the goals of university learning is to prepare students for a satisfying life by helping them identify elements of their academic life that resonate with their hopes for their futures (Krumboltz & Worthington 312). For me, university life- this course module included- has been an experiment in recognizing and building upon experiences that will carry me into the professional world. Specifically, I believe that the legal aspect of health and social care is so critical to the profession that political activism is an inherent charge to all who work within health and social care. Being an advocate for patients is perhaps the most salient aim of all of those who work within health and social care, and my university experience has allowed me to embrace political action as part of my future.

One of the most essential outcomes of my college career, thus far, has been to truly embrace the function of learning as an individual, lifelong endeavor. In essence, I am cognizant now more than ever that there will not always be an assignment to motivate me to learn. In her text entitled Building Communities of Learners, author S. P. McCaleb asks "how can classroom teachers recognize and understand what such students in their classrooms know and feel? How can teachers help them to look critically at what they know, where they gained this knowledge, and how they can participate in acquiring and creating new knowledge and learning that they would see as useful and relevant in their lives?" (141) More importantly, however, how can students learn to do all of this for themselves? Learning does not end after graduation, and thus a critical function of academia is to support students as lifelong learners.

In working collaboratively in the university environment, I found that every learning community is a diverse learning community. Sensitivity toward various learning styles that differ markedly from my own is thus a critical character trait within the professional environment. Though I do not, and likely will never, comprehensively understand how logical-mathematical learners process and integrate information, I am well aware that I may need to work with these types of individuals in the future. Having worked on group projects with a diverse group of learners within the university environment, I understand that conflicts arise from diverging styles.

Having worked within a clinical environment, I am well aware of how dynamic interaction between various personalities can be both beneficial and detrimental. While the act of learning is not always at the forefront of professional interaction, it does indeed inform relationships in a multiplicity of ways. Learning styles are indicative of individual personalities. Though the danger exists in stereotyping all visual learners as flighty artists and all logical learners as glasses-wearing mathematicians, sensitivity toward learning styles is paramount in a collaborative, working environment.

Summation: Visual Learning in a Learning-Diverse Environment

Prior to college, my learning experience was largely defined by my gradual embrace of visual learning as my true, optimum channel for knowledge acquisition and critical thinking. Currently, I am adapting my learning style to the self-motivated and diverse learning-style context. Within the professional world, I will not always have the benefit of time to adapt presentations to be visually applicable; thus, I am learning to process information more quickly by seeing it as it comes.

For instance, in memorizing the names and dates of legislation within health and social care, I use the colors of the rainbow as a tool for progression. The first act to memorize would be red in color, the second orange, and so on to purple if need be. While undergoing this entire process in my head is challenging, as the inclination is to physically write or draw the images, it helps me in working with others who may have an affinity for dates and memorization and not want to be temporally hindered by my excessive note-taking, chart-making, and other traditional modalities for transforming information to be visual in nature.

In the professional world, undoubtedly, I will not have the benefit of colored markers and notebooks; and yet, I will be expected to learn just as efficiently without visual tools as I do with them. While understanding how I learn was indeed a minor victory, a greater success is practically adapting my learning styles to the real world. Visual memory exercises, by extension, help me a great deal. In associating new knowledge with images of that which is already mine, I am able to integrate that which may not be visual with that which has already been transformed.

Adapting my process of creative conversion to the professional world feels neither easy nor natural. However, critical is it for me to continue to use the same techniques that work for me within the academic world after graduation. Lifelong learning depends on using methods that work and modifying them for the diverse, professional community.

In essence, everyone learns differently. In school, the goal is ascertain what kind of learner one is. In university, the goal evolves within the context of self-motivation, charging students to learn on their own time and in their own way without a clearly defined timeline or process. Beyond graduation, the goal is to be able to collaborate effectively with others who may not learn in exactly the same way as one does. A salient function of university learning, by extension, is to prepare students to work within populations of diverse learners.

The Health and Social Care module, for me, has been a transformative experience in a range of ways. I have learned how to integrate learning processes that served me when I was younger into the university environment and I have begun to adapt these processes to the collaborative, professional context. In automatically absorbing information through the filter of visualization, no piece of information seems foreign to me. Undoubtedly, the visualization process is more easily adapted to certain pieces of information than others. However, I am increasingly learning to naturally perceive things in a way that is conducive to my own learning style; it is at once visual and transformative.

Works Cited

Bowden, John, and Ference Marton. The University of Learning. London: Routledge, 2004.

Christopher, Suzanne, Tim Dunnagan, Stephen F. Duncan, and Lynn Paul. "Education for Self-support: Evaluating Outcomes Using Transformative Learning Theory." Family Relations 50.2 (2001): 134+.

Krumboltz, John D., and Roger L. Worthington. "The School-to-work Transition from a Learning Theory Perspective." The Career Development Quarterly 47.4 (1999): 312.

McCaleb, Sudia Paloma. Building Communities of Learners: A Collaboration among Teachers, Students, Families, and Community. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994.

McIlroy, David. Studying at University: How to be a Successful Student. London: Sage, 2004.

Moon, Jennifer. Reflection in Learning and Professional Development: Theory and Practice. London, Kogan Page, 1999.

Northedge, Andrew. The Good Study Guide. Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 2005.

West, Thomas G. In the Mind's Eye Visual Thinkers, Gifted People with Dyslexia and Other Learning Difficulties, Computer Images, and the Ironies of Creativity. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997.