What is Visual Learning?
Visual learners thrive when information is presented through images, charts, and other visual aids, allowing them to better understand and retain key concepts. In this article, we’ll explore what it means to be a visual learner, along with tips on how to make the most of this learning style to enhance your exam preparation.
This article is correct as at 8 October 2024.
As the name suggests, a visual learner is one who best absorbs information by visual means. In other words, they prefer to look at material rather than listen to someone telling them something. That could include absorbing facts via charts, infographics and graphs, among other tools.
It’s a different approach from learning via words through reading and writing alone as your preferred method, with the crucial distinction that visual learning includes images as well as text.
What characterises a visual learner?
- These learners can see and picture concepts easily, and they are quite colour-focused.
- They’re highly imaginative and creative, so they are often good designers.
- They’re excellent at things such as directions and recognising landmarks, so they’re good navigators who (unlike many of us!) find maps easy to understand.
- As well as being prolific notetakers and list-makers, they’re also well organised and good at planning.
- They typically like to watch someone completing a task, rather than being told how to do it.
- These learners also often have an almost photographic memory.
- They frequently find themselves doodling or drawing as they process information.
How to make the most of being a visual learner
If you think you could be a visual learner, embrace it for the talent it genuinely is. Don’t force yourself to stick with an alternative way of processing information that may not work for you.
- Write everything down. That includes notes (ideally colour-coded), lists of to-do tasks, or jotting down your thoughts in a concept map. If you haven’t come across this approach before, it’s a way of representing ideas and facts as circles or boxes, connected via labelled arrows. You can have a free-form or more rigid structure and link ideas with phrases such as ‘e.g.’, ‘causes’, ‘requires’ or ‘contributes to’.
- The place where you work could have an impact. Take time to rearrange your study space if it’s cluttered or messy – for visual learners, having less-than-pristine surroundings can be disproportionately stressful.
- Keep a notebook handy at all times for drawing and sketching as you organise your thoughts or take in information. At the same time, you can make plans for the best strategy for any project you’re undertaking.
- Work with the list-making technique that’s best for you. That might include colour-coding, creating multiple list categories or listing your tasks in the order in which you need to complete them.
- Make the most of colour-coding. Use this technique to help not only with your to-do list but also with spreadsheets, files, and notes. Buy some highlighters and pens in different shades and play around with various ways of using them. With a bit of trial and error, you’ll be able to find out what works best for you. Try to make a logical connection between a specific colour and the point you need to remember.
- Learn from videos. We’re not suggesting for one minute that you do all your revision this way. However, for some topics, you may find videos, such as those available on our YouTube channel and elsewhere online, which are helpful in a way that text alone isn’t. What’s more, such clips are likely to be more beneficial than, say, podcasts which are a purely auditory form of taking facts and figures on board, so won’t be as effective for most visual learners.
- Use mind maps. You might also find these useful. They are simply the visual way of capturing ideas and allow you to organise your thoughts around a particular topic clearly. Start off with a central idea before moving on to sub-categories until you have covered the whole topic.
Whichever way you decide to study, as a visual learner you’ll work best when incorporating both text and graphics into your revision. Moreover, when you study or revise using a method that aligns with your natural learning style, you’ll typically develop a better understanding of the material involved and retain it for longer – all of which will boost motivation, confidence, engagement and, ultimately, performance.
So understanding your own learning style is not about restricting what you can do but rather about empowering yourself to become more efficient as you work towards completing your professional examinations.