“WE HEAR YOU, WE UNDERSTAND YOU” - USING VARK SURVEY TO UNDERSTAND FIRST YEAR LAW LEARNERS

Abstract

With technological advancement and industrial revolution 4.0, teaching and learning, particularly in a higher learning institution, would definitely face challenges, not only to learners but also to teachers. One of the challenges faced by teachers is the learning styles of learners in this era. As learning styles and preferences may differ from one individual to another, understanding the learners is crucial so that the design and formulation of the teaching lessons, activities and assessment for the course would suit the learners’ learning styles and meet the course learning outcomes. Hence, by employing a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods, a VARK survey has been administered on 77 first-year law students of one higher learning institution in Malaysia to identify the learners’ learning styles. Their preference in terms of how they learn best and what type of activities that suit them most for their learning process can be assessed. Considerably, the survey would assist the researchers in profiling the learners into groups based on their respective learning styles, particularly visual (V), auditory (A), reading/writing (R) or kinesthetics (K). This article emphasizes on the importance of understanding learners for any given course, generally, and harnessing the power of VARK survey in assisting the teachers to understand their learners better. Being able to understand the learning styles of the learners, the teachers would be able to structure and plan the teaching lessons to suit the styles of the learners. Consequentially, the learning objectives of the course would be met.