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Students ignore their own learning style
The Indiana survey
Learning styles are a preference, so the question is how strongly learners stick to theirs. During the first week of a semester at a university in Indiana, over 400 students completed the VARK questionnaire and were classified by learning style.
How students really studied
At the end of the semester the same students completed a study strategy questionnaire about how they had actually studied during the term. An overwhelming majority used study strategies that were supposedly incompatible with their learning style.
Matching didn't help
The minority who did study in line with their style did not perform significantly differently on the course assessments.
Why do students pick study methods that don't match?
In a 2009 study, Jeffrey Karpicke, Andrew Butler, and Henry Roediger surveyed college students about how they study. The most commonly reported strategy was rereading notes or textbooks, and self-testing was reported far less often. Students tended to choose methods that feel fluent and familiar. Cognitive psychologists have long found that familiarity is a poor guide to how much was learned.
Which study habits does research favor?
In 2013, John Dunlosky and colleagues reviewed ten common study techniques in Psychological Science in the Public Interest. They rated practice testing and distributed practice, which means spreading study sessions over time, as having high utility across many subjects and learners. Highlighting and rereading were rated as having low utility. The ratings were based on how widely each technique had been tested across materials and people.