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Learners, Teachers and Learning Styles
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There Are Many Kinds of Learners
This page explains what we know about learning and describes different categories of learners and how they may benefit from using Study Star. First, however, let us say a few words about other ways to improve academic performance. The Best Way to LearnResearch indicates that the best way to learn is by one-on-one instruction from a good teacher who is an expert in the subject. If you are a parent of a student and you want to improve your child's education regardless of expense, hire excellent teachers for each subject and replace school with on-on-one instruction. This will cost about as much as sending a student to an Ivy League school (roughly $30,000 per year), but nothing is better.
Can't Parents Teach Their Own Children Almost as Well?Sometimes. It depends on many factors. Certainly many home-schooled students have achieved remarkable levels of learning. But not all parents are expert teachers, and it is very common for adolescents to be very resistant to learning anything from their parents. Parents attempting even a few hours per week of parental tutoring may encounter anger and episodes of other emotional difficulties. If it doesn't work for you, doing more of it might not make it work. Know your limits, respect your child, and use common sense.Franchise TutorsThere are national chains of franchises that offer tutoring and other assistance to students. Their advertising usually shows two students with one teacher, but you might pay around $40 per hour for your student to work with a tutor three-on-one, four-on-one, or even five-on-one (5 students working with the same teacher at once).Franchise hotels and restaurants succeed because people like predictable quality -- when buying from a familiar national brand, you have some reasonable expectation that things will not be surprisingly bad. The tutoring franchises try to provide the same expectations, and they are selective in whom they hire as tutors, so you know that your child's tutor will be a certified educator. Almost all students will learn more from five-on-one tutoring than they learn as one in twenty-five in a classroom. But there are still great variations in results, and only two hours per week at a tutoring franchise will cost around $300/month per student.
Other OptionsThe going rate for freelance non-franchise tutors varies around the country, by location, subject and requirements, but it is usually $40/hour or less. If you can locate and select good freelance tutors for your student and their subjects, one-on-one tutoring from them may be a much better option than the typical four-on-one at a franchise.Your child's school may offer free tutoring from volunteers or from other students. Students of high-school age or older typically respond well to cash incentives, and you might find that you get better results by offering your child $50/week for getting A's than you get by spending $80/week on tutoring. Software Learning AidsNow, let us compare what software, for example, Study Star, can do for students against tutoring and personalized instruction.InteractionInteraction is the reason why one-on-one teaching and tutoring is so effective. During one-on-one teaching and tutoring sessions, there is usually a continuous stream of two-way interaction between teacher and student, with each asking and answering many questions.Computer software, for example, Study Star, also provides interaction, and thus software represents a low-cost substitute for a skilled teacher. Software is not nearly as effective as a skilled teacher, but it provides some of the same benefits. Software is considerably more affordable, and because you don't have to pay by the hour, a student can interact with software many more hours per week. Motivation and Self-DisciplineWhen you pay for a tutor or sessions at a franchise learning center, you are paying for supervision. The student is supervised during the sessions and does not have to decide to study or need to control the urge to turn on the TV or pick up the phone. Young students who find themselves in a demanding academic program before their maturity and self-discipline are equal to the task will benefit considerably from the supervisory aspects of tutoring.In contrast, software like Study Star will work best for students who are motivated to study and spend time and effort to learn and who have the self-discipline to follow through. Developing self-discipline is a part of maturing, and we believe that Study Star is also suitable to assist students who are ready to develop the personal strengths needed to be self-directed learners. Students who have not yet developed much ability to stay on task will need help, guidance, and supervision to gain the major benefits of using a program like Study Star. The Successful StudentGood students were our primary target in developing Study Star. We want to help good students who know the value of education and who are working hard to reach their goals. These students will take quickly to Study Star, because it will reinforce and build on many of the good study habits that they already have. One major benefit of Study Star to these students will be to remind and encourage them to do a good job on the assignments and subjects in which they have little interest, those on which they might be inclined to work too quickly and cut too many corners.The Right-Brained StudentThe skills required to succeed in school are largely verbal and logical -- the ability to read, comprehend and remember complex ideas, the ability to organize ideas, and the ability to think, speak, and write about abstract concepts. Unfortunately, not every brain is built to excel in these activities, and some students who are talented, hard-working, and smart otherwise struggle with schoolwork because of their ill-suitedness to these tasks. These are the students called "right-brained," in contrast to the "left-brained" people who have the abilities that schools emphasize.Study Star functions primarily to improve performance in the same areas that schools emphasize, reading, writing, organizing, outlining. It does not include any graphics, drawing, sound, or multi-media. So, it does not offer many right-brained activities. But it does include preview and review questions that try to use diverse parts of the brain, encouraging independent thought, imagination and visualization in whatever direction the student wants to go. And it tries to be non-judgmental, giving the student many choices of activities and great latitude about what to type where. The typical result of giving Study Star to right-brained students will be this: they will not pay much attention to the instructions on the screen; they will not read the help to see what to do; they will make inefficient use of the program, typing things into the wrong places, etc. -- but they will still get more out of their textbooks and be much more engaged in reading assignments than they are without Study Star. This is a start. From there, the results depend on help and encouragement, effort and determination. The Adult LearnerStudy Star will help adult learners by:
The Study Star techniques for reading, note-taking, and outlining improve study efficiency by helping the learner identify important facts, and the Study Star features for self-testing will be very useful in helping adult learners with memorization. |
Next: System Requirements