The ‘Troubled History’ of Labelling Learning Styles

For better or worse, the educational theory that seems to have permeated American education more than any other has been the notion of learning styles. Although the definition can vary, the most popular version of the idea argues that people can be categorized as visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners.

From its earliest origins, though, critics have underscored the very thin and tangled research line that supported the learning styles framework, and in recent years cognitive psychologists have tried to toll the death knell of this approach—without much success. Something about the broader idea of learning styles seems so appealing or persuasive that it continues to shape the thinking of many classroom teachers and parents as well as our own self-descriptions.

Thomas Fallace of William Paterson University has written a book titled You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of the Learning Style Idea, tracing the theory from its early origins through a half-century of teaching and thinking about education.

He talks with us about whether learning styles actually exist, whether the concept has helped or harmed students, and—if learning styles don’t exist—whether we should just abandon the idea once and for all.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Cold War psychologist Herman Witkin’s experiments to test whether people could tell they were seated upright in a tilted room and the unlikely link between those studies and the idea of learning styles
• The problematic application of the learning styles idea over time, often emerging out of the efforts of well-intentioned people trying to improve educational outcomes—and in fact succeeding in some cases
• The vagaries of the “kinesthetic learner” label and how it’s been applied disproportionately to Black and Hispanic students, those with special needs, and English-language learners
• Why the idea of learning styles has been so popular and persistent
• Why the danger comes from labelling students as one kind of learner or another, not from varying the modalities in which they engage with course content
• Drawing on the history of research on learning styles as we think about the role of AI-assisted learning

Guest Bio: Thomas Fallace is a professor of education and director of the master’s in secondary education program at William Paterson University. His research focuses largely on curriculum history and the history of ideas in schools, and he is the author of five books, most recently You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of the Learning Style Idea.

Resources Mentioned:

• Thomas’s Book: You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of the Learning Style Idea (The University of Chicago Press)
• Episode Transcript

Designed for Learning is hosted by Jim Lang, a professor of the practice in Notre Dame Learning’s Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence and the author of several influential books on teaching. The podcast is produced by Notre Dame Learning’s Office of Digital Learning. For more, visit learning.nd.edu/podcast. You can also follow Notre Dame Learning on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.

Transcript

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(soft music)- Welcome to "Designed for Learning", a podcast from Notre Dame Learning. I'm your host, Jim Lang.(casual downtempo music) For better or worse, the educational theory that seems to have permeated American education more than any other has been learning styles. Although the definition of learning styles can vary, the most popular version of the idea argues that people can be categorized as individual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners. Hundreds of books and articles have been published on this idea. Many thousands of classrooms and curricula have leaned into this approach, and you hear people long past their school years referencing themselves in respect to these ways of learning. From its earliest origins, though, critics have underscored the very thin and tangled research line that supported learning styles, and in recent years, cognitive psychologists have tried to toll the death knell on learning styles without much success. Something about the broader idea of learning styles seems so appealing and/or persuasive that it continues to shape the thinking of many classroom teachers and parents, as well as our own self-descriptions. Today's guest has written a new book on the history of learning styles, tracing it from its early origins through a half century of teaching and thinking about education. In this episode, we'll discuss whether learning styles exist, whether the concept has helped or harmed students, and if learning styles don't exist, whether we should just abandon the idea once and for all. Thomas Fallace is a professor of education, and director of the Secondary MAT program at William Paterson University of New Jersey. He's the author of five books, most recently,"You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner", which is the subject of our discussion today. Welcome to "Designed for Learning", Tom.- Thank you for having me.- So I wanna start by asking you to tell us about Herman Witkin, a psychologist from Brooklyn College, and his experiments in putting people in chairs in a tilted room and moving the chairs around, and seeing if they could tell when they were upright. So what was he doing and why?- Well, first of all, thank you for asking that, because this is actually my third podcast I've done on this book, and you're the first one to ask about Witkin,'cause everyone's been so focused on the VAK, the visual, auditory, kinesthetic, that I do, I think Witkin is a really interesting story. And of all the scholars that we studied, like he's still taken seriously today. Like he hasn't really been debunked, his theory, and there are still proponents of his idea, and people that are building on it. So yeah, so Witkin, he's really a Cold War psychologist, but coming out of World War II, I guess there were these stories about pilots who were flying into clouds and coming out of the clouds, and being upside down or sideways, in other words, they had lost their orientation because they had lost their visual field, having been completely obscured by the cloud. So why this was an important study,(laughs) I'm not quite sure, but I think we have to put ourselves back in the 1940s and 50s. I'm sure there was NSF money involved. I'm sure people wanted to be relevant, both to the military and to, you know, the broader public. And so he comes up with this idea to study basically visual field orientation, is sort of what it originally came out of. So he builds this contraption where the subject is sitting in a chair, and the chair tilts sideways, left or right, and then there's a room that you look at that also tilts sideways, left or right. And he would ask the people,"Can you straighten yourself out?" Later on, he developed this thing called a glowing frame and glowing rod, I guess was a little bit easier, and it kind of introduced some new exponents as well, in terms of you could tilt all these different things. And he's basically asking people, "Can you figure out how to put yourself upright using gravity, or using your body orientation in relation to the ground, versus the visual field?" And what he found is that consistently, some people couldn't do it. In other words, some people could straighten themselves out, or at least determine that they were not aligned with the ground, and that some people couldn't. And the people that could, he called them field-independent; the people that could not straighten themselves out, he called field-dependent. So the idea is that your visual field is how you basically get your orientation versus, you know, using other means of figuring out where you are. So then he also develops this embedded figures test, which, probably some people may have heard of or have even seen, where there's basically, like, let's say like a picture of a rhombus, and then the rhombus is in this very busy picture with other lines and colors and shapes superimposed on top of it. And they ask you, "Can you find the rhombus in this picture?" And of course, some people could do it quickly, some people struggled with it and could never find it. So, and then he found a correlation between the same people that couldn't put themselves upright in the chair with the same people that couldn't distinguish the rhombus in this embedded figures test. So he names these field-dependent, he names the other ones field-independent, and he found a certain consistency in terms of who fell into these categories. So then he kind of, you know, the big buzzword at the time was personality studies, building on the work of Gordon Allport. So he kind of writes a couple books about what the implications might be. And, you know, he gradually, very slowly, very gradually, expands this outward. And it's not until 1977 that he really first publishes something on the educational implications of this. But other people, and in terms of how it links to learning styles, there were other, mostly educational, researchers, particularly there was a woman named Rosalie Cohen, who was an anthropologist who wrote a paper, I think in 1969, where she basically builds on this theory, and says that low income students tend to be more field-dependent, but schools are set up in a field-independent way. And so this can partially explain why lower, and you know, she doesn't really talk about race. She's really talking about income, why lower income students may be struggling in school, because the sort of epistemological assumptions behind the way a school is set up, then the way knowledge is transmitted, conflicts with the way that they are living their lives in a day-to-day manner. She doesn't actually use, she doesn't use the embedded figures test, which does become available. Eventually Witkin moves to ETS, you know, Educational Testing Service, and then he kind of markets the embedded figures test. She's just using it more as a conceptual framework, and then a number of other scholars start to build on this to try to build out this idea that it becomes racialized sort of in the 70s, right? And that maybe Black and Hispanic, and low-income Black and Hispanic students are more field-dependent, but that schools that tend to be white and middle class tend to be a field-independent. The terms "analytic thinking" versus "intuitive thinking" kind of come in and get played, play into this, in terms of the field-dependent people are intuitive, where the field-- lemme try that again. Field-independent people, yes, are gonna be more analytic. So it's never really proven.- Right.- In other words--and Witkin himself never really steps into a classroom. He's really just presenting his theory very slowly, very meticulously, very peer-reviewed. And it's sort of, these educators are taking the idea and trying to figure out the implications for it and the ramifications for it. Witkin does do a little bit of research in higher ed, which is relevant, right, to this podcast, where he finds that students that are field-dependent tend to like teachers that are field-dependent, and students that are field-independent tend to like teachers that are field-independent.- Hmm.- But he never really does a whole lot more beyond that. And then it's other scholars that are sort of taking this idea, and out of this grows the idea that there might be a Black or Hispanic learning style. And this idea is entertained, you know, mostly in scholarly journals throughout the 80s and 90s. And then by 2000s, it's sort of run its course, after the same people that were proponents of the idea start to see it being used as a stereotype, which is in other words-- Right.- It was never intended to say "All Black people learn in this way, or "Black people can only learn in this context, and white students can only learn in this context." And so some of the same people that were originally supporting the idea start to get kind of hesitant that it's being abused, and it may be causing more harm than good, which is a term that comes up a lot in the book, right?"More harm than good."- Yeah. As these theories are sort of abused, and maybe extended beyond what the empirical evidence is maybe allowing them to do.- Yeah. I think if, when I read the book, you know, there's this whole history, and you keep looking at all these theories, you think, oh, this just seems like it's not really coming from the research. But at the same time, you see, they're not villains. People are actually, most people in the book, they're developing these learning style theories, like Black learning theories. They want to do something good. They have good intentions to sort of like combat racism in the schools, or like a mismatch between certain kind of learners and the school system. So obviously, you trace the intentions of these folks, as well as, you know, maybe some of the research was not well founded, right?- Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all, I was very careful not to villainize teachers. I absolutely believe that the teachers were trying to do the best they could for their students. The researchers, for the most part, again, Witkin, I said, you know, I made a point, he stuck very close to the peer-reviewed research and didn't really overextend. But you know, there are some figures in there, you know, Rita Dunn is someone that I write about.- Rita Dunn was the one that, yeah, that sort of stands out as a possible villain.- Yeah, you cross into a little bit of, you know, they're selling a product.- Yeah.- And I don't think she got rich off this; I don't think she's a millionaire, but you know, she had a lot to be gained by saying, I can solve your problem, I created a learning style inventory, you can take this inventory, give it to your students, I have activities to go along with it. You know, I think she's probably guilty more of self-promotion than necessarily financial interest. But, you know, a lot of people are drawing problems with her theory, and they're attacking her research, and she doesn't back down. She doesn't say, Oh, you're right, let me go back to the drawing board, let me write some experimental design and actually figure out whether what I'm saying is really true. She kind of digs her heels in and says, No, no, no, it works, it works, just talk to the teachers, just talk to the superintendents. And I don't doubt that it did. I mean, that's the thing is like, I don't doubt that she wasn't having success in the classroom. And if you're a superintendent, and your students are struggling, and you've been hired to raise test scores, and you can hire this woman and she can actually deliver test scores, I mean, I understand why they were excited about this theory. So, it's a different question, though, as a scholar to ask, is it because of the learning styles, or is it because of some other reason? And, you know, at some point, obviously, I have a whole chapter on the dangers of the kinesthetic learner label. You know, are we inadvertently reinforcing inequalities in society by creating these labels? You know, maybe the readers haven't read the book, but the kinesthetic label gets disproportionately applied to Black and Hispanic students, students with special needs, English language learners. All the students that we traditionally think are struggling or having a hard time in school, they're all magically labeled kinesthetic learners. And the kinesthetic label is the vaguest, the least supported by the research. And just like, nobody really knows what a kinesthetic activity is. Nobody really knows what a kinesthetic learner is. There's really a lot of inconsistency in terms of what it even means. Like some people say you watch a, like a Home Depot video on how to do something, that's considered kinesthetic learning-- even though, are you not just watching it with your eyes? I mean, how is that not visual learning? I don't-- Right.- Or likewise, if you're doing a kinesthetic activity, it's not like you're putting a blindfold on and clogging your ears. Like, you're using your whole body to do that activity.- Right.- Including presumably listening to the teacher giving directions. So, the division between these activities was always problematic also. But sure, by and large, teachers were trying their best to reach students. I think the researchers themselves were really developing the idea that we can't treat all students the same. I think that's still true today.- Right.- But you know, it's often said that the theory is intuitive. It's also intuitive to believe that the sun revolves around the earth, right? That's intuitive. When I look at it, it looks like it's revolving around the earth. Right.- But I wouldn't go teach that to people because it feels good.- Right. Right.- Or it feels right.- Right,- Right, I think as researchers and teachers, we have a responsibility to teach, you know, the most accurate that we have at that point, the accurate knowledge that we have.- Yeah, it's fascinating when you look, you know, throughout the whole book, you're actually tracing multiple threads, kind of coming to this place of believing this theory. You have the kind of racialized stuff coming from the way you trace it through Rita Dunn, and all these other, the Black learning theories. You have also the personality theories coming into play. And also, historically, the idea that, you know, the general idea that we have to acknowledge that everyone learns a little bit differently. People are different, or different preferences for learning. Like, that is also aligned with the 60s, you know, trying to recognize individual dignity. So there's like a historical line there, too. Like, put this in historical context, of social movements in the United States, too.- Well, I think the major pivot is in the 60s when we moved from equality to equity, right? Equality means treating everyone exactly the same, giving everyone access to the same curriculum, the same schools. And by the end of the 60s, we've abandoned that idea and we've developed an equity, which is that, despite people's differences, we're trying to get everyone to achieve the same outcome. I mean, this is still a issue we're dealing with today, in terms of, you know, what is the job of the school? Is it to have everybody achieve a certain level of learning? Or is it to rank and sort? I'm thinking about all these debates about, right, grade inflation, and supposedly Harvard and Yale are looking at, you know, giving less A's. And I'm just thinking, like, well, what is the point? Do you want the students to learn something, or are you just literally trying to rank them? And what is the role of a school, and what is the role of the curriculum? It all comes back to this equality versus equity, I think, debate. And so yes, the learning style idea kind of gains steam when schools are held responsible, and of course, No Child Left Behind was a big catalyst in terms of pushing this forward even more, because schools were then held responsible. You couldn't just bury your weak students in the statistics of the strong students, because No Child Left Behind, you had to disaggregate by race and disaggregate by class, and disaggregate by ELL, and special needs status. All of them had to go up, according to AYP, annual yearly progress. So a lot of schools, that probably for decades thought they were great, and all of a sudden they're getting dinged because these students are struggling, so now the schools have to focus on those students. You know, the whole, No Child Left Behind, that's why it was called that. It was sort of zeroing in on every individual student, making sure they were all growing. And this is an outcome of this sort of shift towards equity.- Yeah. So, you know, one thing the book talks about, too, is like why this theory gets so much traction? And we talked about here in this podcast, definitely aimed more to higher educators. But at the same time, you know, this is a thing that's just in the society in a general way, in teacher-education programs. Actually, I was talking to my wife about this book, about your book yesterday on the phone, and I mentioned that, I sort of described the book to her. She said, Oh yeah. And when she was at teacher-education program in St. Louis, this would've been in the 90s, she went to a learning style school as part of her graduate, like field trips, essentially. And she totally remembered it, and she was like, It was a strange place, you know, students will do, like, musical science stuff. And so all the way from there to like here, I give workshops for faculty on this campus and other places, and I still hear the idea of learning styles being mentioned by faculty members in the discussion section. So why'd this theory get so popular, and became so adopted everywhere?- You know, I think it's intuitive. It seems like it makes sense. You know, we haven't talked about Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, but that is not, was never intended to be a learning theory, or I should say it was never intended to be a learning style theory. It really was about how society defines intelligence. But a lot of teachers take that and develop that--that theory was really popular. And I think it justified teachers' sort of intuitive sense that students were different, and that they didn't have a language to describe the differences of the students, and why some were achieving and some weren't, but they seemed to have strengths in some areas and not others. And so it kind of creates a framework for, you know, describing, explaining disparities in the students that they were seeing. But, again, none of this stuff is, all of this stuff is about categorizing students and labeling them. It's not really about finding pedagogical strategies. In other words, most of the psychologists stop right at the point where things will get interesting, which is like, what learning strategies will actually teach these students.- Right.- They don't have that knowledge. They don't see that as part of their job. And so that's kind of left to the teachers and the teachers kind of fill that in. And some of these curriculum specialists and professional development specialists are left to kind of fill in that hole themselves. For whatever reason, that tends to be where it stops. I mean, I'm a historian, so I write history all the time, and at the end, I'm always getting pushback from the editor, like, Okay, well why does this matter? Right? So that last paragraph, and now all of a sudden, I have to kind of quickly throw something together, and then all the people that read the article, all they care about is that one last paragraph.- (chuckling) Right.- And like, well, I spent 10 minutes on this. So I think there was a lot of that going on with these, you know, theorists. I mean, they spent all this time and energy and grant money to come up with these really tight theories, and then someone said, So what? And so then they went like, I guess maybe teachers care about this. But they don't have the knowledge, they don't have the empirical evidence to really say what the teaching implications are. But they don't wanna say, I'm irrelevant. So there's a big space there. I think obviously people like you step in and fill that in, but there's still a space that people need to step in, and if you don't fill it for them, they're gonna fill it themselves.- Yeah, because people read the theories, they're fascinated by them, and then, Okay, what do I do with this? And you're right, if someone's not doing that work for them, they're smart people. They wanna do the good work for their students and find ways to apply these theories. And so I think you're right about that. That gap is definitely part of the problem. I definitely felt, when I started writing about teaching and learning myself, I feel like I was a synthesizer, drawing from both sides. But I feel like more neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, are actually filling that gap themselves now. I think there's more that's happening right now than happened 20 years ago. And that kinda leads me up to the critiques of learning styles, which are coming from folks like Dan Willingham, cognitive psychologists, who are saying, okay, you know, doing what you did, essentially. So it looks where this comes from, there's not much research behind this stuff, and why should we let this idea go? Or even, it's been harmful. But you have a good, interesting point about this is like, how much harm did it really cause? So tell me a little bit about that.- Well, yeah, I mean, again, I go back to that Rita Dunn example. Like, I have no doubt that she was being successful in what she was doing. So, so what, then? Maybe there's not a there-there. Again, I do think there's a purpose in being accurate. I do think Dunn pushed this idea that all struggling learners are kinesthetic a little too far, and there's a danger there of depriving students of academic rigor, you know, the very students that need it the most. So, you know, there's that outcome. You know, one of the last studies I cited-- in fact I submitted the article, it was under review, and a study came in while I was basically waiting for the book to be reviewed. It was kind of a missing piece, which was, there was some researchers who asked students, parents, and teachers What do you think about when you hear the word kinesthetic, and what do you think about when you hear the word, you know, kinesthetic learner, and what do you hear when you hear the word visual learner? And what they said is when they hear visual learner, they think smart.- Oh boy.- And when they hear kinesthetic learner, they think sporty. Sporty is not bad.- Right, right.- But, you know, the purpose of schools is not to make kids sporty. The purpose of school is to make everybody smart. So, there was a perception, I mean, this was a missing piece, because I kind of didn't have anything saying that, you know, there's a downside to being called a kinesthetic learner, and I feel like this was it, that we're basically saying, oh, you're not gonna be successful in school, but that's okay because there's recess, and there's sports after school. And no, you know, the teacher's job is always to be pushing and getting every student academically as ready as they can for the next level. And these labels can be dangerous, you know, for that reason.- And how about the critiques, and the critiques of psychologists now today?- Yeah, so I think the critique is, it's tricky, because if you say"I'm against learning styles," a lot of teachers might think you're saying,"Teach every student the same."- Right.- And that's not what we're saying, right? They also think maybe you're arguing against diversifying instruction. Diversifying instruction means you're doing different things over the course of a lesson. So you're approaching a topic from a different angle. You're incorporating some visual elements, some kinesthetic elements. I shouldn't even use that word. Hands-on elements.(both chuckle)- Yeah.- You know, and there's nothing--that is correct. I mean, that is true, as you know. I mean, this is an important way for students to learn, and approaching it from different angles and different viewpoints is going to help all students understand a concept better. And in fact, the studies show that basically visual wins out. If you had to pick one, visual is usually the one that wins the best, right? So if you have to pick one, you know, to the listeners, use visuals in your teaching,'cause that's the one that's gonna be the most powerful. But that doesn't mean you do that all the time, certainly diversifying your instruction. But what I'm against, and what the psychologists are against, are these labels, of saying "You're a kinesthetic learner. You only learn through kinesthetic means," or "You're an auditory learner. You only learn through auditory means." The labels can be dangerous. In some cases, it doesn't even make sense. Like let's say you're learning maps, right? Let's say you're in a geography class and you're learning maps. Is there, like, you're really gonna blindfold a kid and have them feel the map.- Right.- I mean, a map is a visual representation of reality.- Right, right.- Like, you have to be visual in that case.- Right.- You can't make a kinesthetic or an auditory, I'm gonna tell you about the map?- Right.- Close your eyes.- Right.- I mean, so certain tasks, and Dan Willingham kind of talks about this, certain tasks just are gonna lend themselves to certain modes, modalities, or ways of learning that are appropriate for that particular task. So, but just let me-- what were the psychologists saying? The psychologists were saying that in an experimental design, if I have three classes, and I have one set of class where I teach everybody visual, I have another class where I teach everybody kinesthetic, and I have another class where I teach everybody auditory. And then I have a third class where I randomly assign-- or in this case, it'll be a fourth class--I randomly assign. And then I have a fifth class where I give them an inventory and I say, "You're visual, you're auditory, you're kinesthetic, I'm gonna give you an activity that aligns with it." If the learning style theory were true, the fifth class, the one that took the inventory, should learn better than all the other ones. But that never happens.- Yeah.- They don't do better than the randomly assigned one, and they don't necessarily do better than the one that's all visual and all kinesthetic and all auditory. And typically the one that's all visual is the one that wins.- Hmm.- So, but that's a design that teachers don't really do. They don't really do that kind of thing. So this is why you kind of need laboratory experiments, is why you need sort of, you know, that you need psychologists, obviously, with grants and stuff to set this stuff up. But that's what really, under the scientific experimental design, you would need to happen. And that just was never happening. In fact, as early as 1978, I found a study where they reviewed basically the VAK, the kinesthetic, auditory-- visual, auditory, kinesthetic model. And they said the research just doesn't support it. And this was just for reading. So, but then it continues to go forward. And then every 10 years ago, there's a new lit review and the lit review says, "Nope, still not." You know, more studies. Nope, still no research.- Yeah.- So it's not like it once had the research behind it and then it lost it when additional studies were done. Like, there was never research supporting this idea that you should be aligning particular lesson plans with the modalities of students, that they would learn better that way.- Yeah, so there's a problem there. I've also read that, you know, people oftentimes will describe themselves as like a certain kind of learner, but when you test them, it's actually the one that's best for them is actually not the one they thought was best for them.- Exactly.- It's a self description problem as well.- And they can use it as an excuse, like, oh well I can't do that reading,'cause I'm a kinesthetic learner, you know, or I'm a visual learner. That's the common one. I'm a visual learner, so stop explaining things, I need a paragraph-- I mean, I need a picture, I need an image. That's not necessarily true.- Yeah. So let's move forward in the higher education classroom. And you teach actually, right? Obviously you teach in a higher education classroom. So like do you make a real point to sort of diversify your instruction, in terms of images and audio? I mean, what's your thinking about this for your own teaching?- Sure, I mean, I teach almost entirely asynchronous online. That's a whole nother ball game right there. But yes, I use videos, I use readings, I use some discussion board. I'm not a big fan of discussion board in general. I use it very carefully. That's a whole nother discussion.- Yeah, yeah, yeah.- But yeah, absolutely. I do try to diversify it. You know, I think about the lengths of the reading. I always try to find the shortest version of something I can find, you know, not because of rigor, just because they're busy, and the less time they take reading, the more time they can do the activity and apply the information to the tasks that I have for them to do. But yeah, I mean, I've had to shift from a face-to-face to asynchronous. So that's basically taken the kinesthetic out of it, I guess. I mean, I don't have students make video of themselves, you know, I don't know, unpacking their lunch or anything.(both chuckle)- Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I think for me, I know you just mentioned the idea of not having, like drawing too many conclusions from your historical analysis, but still at the end of the book, you kind of talk about, you know, how this kind of research might help us be more, have some healthy skepticism toward new ideas or theories in education. I think that it's worthwhile, you know, talking about this for a second or two. And the one that feels really prominent right now is sort of individualized instruction with technology, and AI is really pushing that conversation. And so let's just talk about that for a minute or two. You know, what's your thoughts about this? I mean, is the promise of AI going to help get that-- is it doing the same thing learning style research was doing to sort of say, let's just teach the learner? Or is there something more complex going on here with AI?- It's interesting how does AI lay upon some of these theories that are introduced in the book. So much of 'em have to do with personal connection.- Right.- Right? If you're an intuitive learner, and you're field-dependent, then the connection you have with the instructor is actually really important, and the comfort you have in the environment that you're in. And so asynchronous learning, and even AI learning, I think is gonna strip you of that. But I suppose if you create an AI bot that's really personal and gets to know you better, it could perhaps address that. I know there's stuff now where like a lot of older people are living by themselves. They're creating these sort of AI bots that can give them comfort and make them feel less alone. So yeah, it's very complicated. It's so early. I guess, you know, what I would say is just wait for the research to come out, make sure the research is addressing learning, not just plausibility, right? So I think that's the biggest problem with the research on learning styles, is that it was all plausible, but they didn't quite have, they didn't connect the dots to actually lead to better learning. And once you did do those kinds of studies, it turned out it wasn't happening. So I would caution with AI, and some of it's just gonna have to do with budgets, and how efficient it is to buy these programs and not hire teachers. You don't have to give AI health insurance or dental.- Right.- So, I mean, that's gonna be part of the conversation, is just budgets and efficiency. And so there's gonna be some trade offs. But I think, you know, what does the research say? And again, back to discussion boards, sorry, I mentioned earlier, I'm not a big fan of discussion boards,'cause there's no actual research that people learn from discussion boards.- Right.- All the research on discussion boards and asynchronous environments have to do with how much, the quality of the discussion, and then how much time on task.- Right.- But that's not learning,- Right, right.- I mean, it's related to learning, but it's not actually learning.- Right, right.- So I see a similar thing happening with AI. You know, we can't just look at quality, we can't just look at time on task. We have to actually look at learning, which is really where the rubber hits the road.- I think one of the promises of AI is essentially that, you know, AI can get to know you, and then sort of offer you learning tasks that would align with the way you are, essentially. And I think that's something I think we should think about, right? Are we designed to, are teachers designed to help people become who they are, or who they already are?- Right.- Or like push them further beyond that? And that's kind of where I think I'm not sure yet, like, I think the research hasn't shown us that yet.- Well, something as simple as, I'm an early riser, like I do my best work between 8:00 AM and, like, 2:00. By three o'clock, I'm like checked out, I'm worthless. But I know a lot of people, they're reversed. They don't get going until eight o'clock at night, and they stay up late. So I think an AI in an asynchronous environment[inaudible] allows my students to study when they do best, when they have the most focus. So that's certainly one thing that could be used. You know, is that a learning style? Not really. I mean, that's just really about what you're comfortable with, and your sleeping pattern. But sure, if I just force myself to stay up later and started sleeping in, I could probably force myself to be a night owl. So I do think there's some potential there, but it certainly, we gotta be careful obviously of the panacea-type language that keeps happening in education. Like, oh, this is it. We finally crossed the threshold. After 250 years, we finally figured out how people learn. It's AI.- (laughs) Right.- That's it, we're done.- Right. This was great. Thanks so much for talking today about the book. And I would really recommend this book to people. It was really enlightening for me, and helped me, you know, I think about other theories that are coming down the line, that kind of healthy skepticism that you argue for, I think, is worthwhile for us to keep considering. So thanks for coming on.- Thanks for having me.- "Designed for Learning" is a production of Notre Dame Learning at the University of Notre Dame. For more, visit our website at learning.nd.edu.