Learning Styles, Hidden Secrets

Learning style questionnaires, if we are not careful, can be little more than a technicality, especially in my area. After all, how many ways can you teach someone to draw? Explaining how only goes so far, this is not English comprehension, you have to get the students to see it, and do it.

Typically we have students for art that have high visual and high kineasthetic prefference, and this makes sense given what art & design entails. Typically they have a lower relative auditory preference. Something like this:



This is what we expect for art. However we have 2 students with the reverse.



When they clearly have a preference for auditory learning, and they are less strong on a visual or kineasthetic approach, why choose Art? I might expect this profile from an English Literature student or something.

A quick peep at their Literacy diagnostic showed them both to still have strong L2 literacy skills, with one of them exhibiting some L3 literacy skills. So, I ask again, why Art?

I believe the answer is that they both have a disability which makes learning via their preferred method difficult. One is Dyslexic and the other Dysgraphic (writing is an issue).

Basically, they don't have as strong a natural leaning to learning art the way art learning works (visually, and by doing), so it seems they picked art because their disability means they are prevented from learning other subjects that better match their natural learning style.

These learners will need particular help (lots more describing than is normal for an art student) since in some ways it appears that they are choosing to go against their own nature by doing art. (That's my view, but I welcome your comments.)

I wonder how much support this lends to my theory that some students choose art, not because they are great at it, but because they simply found other subjects even more difficult (on account of Dyslexia for instance). What do you think?

Accessibility and Colour Blindness

Colour blindness has been more relevant to me this year more than previous years on account of having a colour blind student.

While it certainly doesn't make life easier for an Art & Design & Interactive Media student it doesn't make it impossible to work in the design industry either. I did know of a former product designer, who was colour blind, who had a successful career in industry and in teaching.

Even so, as a teacher, it is helpful to have some understanding of colour blindness so I know what to expect, and can help the student develop strategies to cope with areas of difficulty.

One resource I found recently is a website called Vischeck. Vischeck provides colour blindness simulation tools, including an image previewer, a website previewer and a Photoshop filter. The site also gives information about a Daltonization algorithm for correcting images for colour blind people. All fascinating stuff.

I downloaded the Photoshop filter and installed it for Photoshop and Fireworks. It works fine in both.

I wondered how the normal visible spectrum would look to a colour blind person, and so I used the Photoshop filter to adjust a bog standard colour wheel. The results were truly astonishing:

I just cannot imagine a world so radically different to the one I see now.

Now I know why my student picked a muted grey/green instead of a vibrant green to represent grass in a client visual. To them they looked the same.

This insight into how colour blind people actually see the world is probably the most valuable outcome of this find. Meanwhile the Photoshop filter will allow me to demonstrate it to other people, and to gauge usability of my own designs.