Visualizing Academic Advising in a Learning Styles Context: A Pyramid Approach

Abstract

Although educators are recognizing that academic advising is a crucial component in promoting students' academic success and personal development, the relationship between individuals' learning styles and advising has not been explored. Nevertheless, a) attention to learning style produces measurable improvement in learning and satisfaction; b) advising sessions are learning opportunities; c) although learning styles are fairly evenly distributed among college students, traditional advising methods accentuate the feeling and thinking styles; d) Leisure Science students favor the doing and visual learning styles over both the feeling and thinking styles; and e) students consistently have expressed general dissatisfaction with the advising process. To accommodate visually inclined students - especially in the absence of doing oriented methods - advisors can supplement traditional verbal exchanges and published text-based course descriptions with visually oriented materials. Results of a prior implementation and a more current survey revealed sustained student interest in an advising pyramid that graphically organizes Leisure Science curricula within a pyramidal structure.