Kolb Learning Styles: Divergers And Assimilators

After review of the four Kolb Learning Styles: Divergers, Convergers, Accomodators, and Assimilators, I have determined that I am an Accomodator and also a Converger. As explained, Divergers are people who prefer to feel and watch, work in groups to listen and receive personal feedback. Likewise with an Assimilator watches and think. Their preference is a concise, logical approach. From experience, I know that I can think and imagine about the subject after watching but I won’t be able to comprehend it without actually trying while being explained. I like to learn by trial and error so that I can keep practice until I get it right. Accomodators, like me, prefers doing and feeling (hands-on) and rely on intuition rather than logic. I
chose being a converger also because I like the concepts of doing and thinking too.
People with converging style like to experiment with new ideas, solve problems and make decisions by finding solutions to questions and problems.
In the past, I was an interim manager / cashier at a convenience gas station. At the time my manager was training me on how to maintain and update daily inventory electronically. My manager’s way of training was verbal lectures on how to keep track of inventory on the computer and make orders as oppose to actually showing me step by step, while trying and lecturing. So by reflective observation, I kept to myself and figured it was easy from the way he had instructed. To my disbelief I was unable to do the inventory after he left because his instruction on what I should click on or not to get into a certain section was visually different from logical thinking. I was so embarrassed to call him back to the store so I sat in the office for a little over an hour assimilating. Unfortunately, no
matter how long I assimilated I still could not understand without concrete experience. After coming to realization I knew that calling the manager back wasn’t a bad idea. In fact a good idea instead of just clicking on things I didn’t know and just guessing and causing financial issue for the store inventory. I called my manager back and apologized for wrongly thinking that I was great at being an observer. I explained to him then that I was better in understanding if he actually instructed me verbally and physically at the same time and not just by instructions alone. I was glad that my manager wasn’t upset but instead completely knew my way of understanding and told me that I’m not the only person that learns better hands on experience. My manager was great at his job because not only did he show me to do the inventories that day but he also took the time to train me on scheduling, lotto, financial, and fuel inventories. I had a negative start but became positive in the end.
Another past time I realized I was more of a hands on learner was the time I went to school for Medical Billing and Coding.
I loved and understood everything up until the Medisoft part of the class. At the time my Instructor used an overhead projector with pictures and diagrams of what the Medisoft look like and the functions. After our Instructor showed us diagrams with verbal information about the functions of Medisoft we were given a quiz at the end of the class in which I didn’t do so well because I didn’t take in all the information given. I knew what she was saying but I just wasn’t able to put into mind logically unless I was actually in the program doing it step by step while the Instructor was showing the diagrams of Medisoft. Since it was just a quiz for knowledge it wasn’t graded which was a relief for me. After class I asked my Instructor if we will have actual hands on practice with Medisoft and she said that we will in a week. I had expressed to her that I was having trouble understanding Medisoft because I’m the type that likes to try if I can and not just by reflective observation that I’m weak on. Eventually we got into the real Medisoft part of the program and I did pass the real test with an A. This class had a good outcome for me because I graduated and most of all enjoyed every moment of it because I learned to never be shy to ask questions and always let the Instructor know of my difficulty in learning so I can improve my
skills.
I took two of the learning style inventories questionnaires and got a result that my learning style is called Multimodal with reading and writing with the highest score of eleven and the rest was between eight thru ten. I do agree with the results because I know that my understanding for certain subjects is done differently even though I get the same results.
Math has always been my weakest subject in the past until now. I remember a time the instructor did an algebraic equation and she wrote the problem on the board while talking about finding the sum but somehow I did not understand how to do it. Even though I was visually seeing it and writing it down I needed her help step by step to find the sum. I hear and understand what she’s saying but it’s not embedding into my brain the way it should be. Another time I had was the time I used to work in an elderly homecare to where I had to go into the computer and input my resident’s intakes and outtakes of everything. My work at the time had a system I wasn’t familiar with and was just given a paper handout of how to input but I was still not calculating right until I asked another co-worker to do an example for to see and do myself.
In conclusion, having many learning styles is a great thing I believe by having that I will get experience in learning different styles of every subject and or work related jobs. Having to think things logically to find a solution first, by asking, and or doing hands are definitely great strengths for me because I can’t do anything hands without asking, thinking, and or finding out either way of how I should do things in life. I also know that if I am weak at a certain way of learning all I have to do ask how to do it another way to better comprehend it.