I am fortunate enough to have professors who take the time to understand the different learning styles of their students. I am also fortunate enough to have professors who encourage technology usage. They know how to simultaneously balance relevant information and how to foster a creative learning environment for students of different learning styles, and sometimes this includes social media. Those same professors also know when to close the browser and have students engage in learning rather than simply the absorption of information.
In my perspective, many educators are too quick to jump on the social media bandwagon and send students straight to familiar platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. They rightly realize that these tools can be useful instructional vehicles for visual learners, but I sometimes feel they miss the boat on how to make the information stick.
From the student perspective, I believe that instructors should be cautious and realize that the use of social media is not, as a standalone, the ultimate tool for visual learners. Yes, videos are an ideal way to engage us as part of a larger lesson, and Twitter is a wonderful vehicle for absorbing small, efficient messages (great for those with short attention spans). But visual learners existed long before the internet, and while these tools may be here to stay, I personally don’t want my instructors to lose sight of more traditional, but equally engaging offline tactics (some of which can, ironically, be adapted to online learning environments. My suggestion to instructors is this: Before you jump on YouTube in search of flashy videos that will capture your students’ attention, remember that the internet is one of many tools, and remember that retention is as important as knowledge-transfer.
Here are three tactics that my instructors have employed to appeal to visual learners without the use of a website or social media application as the primary focus of the lesson:
• Role-playing projects: In my Sales and Sales Promotion class, students were assigned partners and each student had to sell the other partner a fictitious product. Students had to read brief documents about the product and also learn how to interpret body language. In many cases, visual learning is often associated with only reading text or looking at a physical object. But for visual learners, the emotional connection between spoken word and body expressions can help reinforce the ideas even further.
• Put text into images whenever possible: For example, if you’re teaching a class about Middle Eastern politics, handing out press clippings is helpful, but it won’t do much to reinforce knowledge with visual learners. Find a map of the Middle East, enlarge it, and put the press clipping titles within the body of the countries. This will make it easier for visually-inclined students to make sense of alliances and neighbors in their geographical context. This strategy can work for any other subjects that require contextual knowledge.
• Mind Movies: Many visual learners report having the ability to create detailed movies in their own minds. This technique could work well for students training to be Emergency Medical Technicians, or those entering technical fields. Consider the same method used by yoga instructors—the power of visualization. Your goal in this example is to get your student to imagine him or herself on the scene of the accident. Have students close their eyes, as you describe every last detail of the patient and the scenario. Be as vivid as possible. When it’s time for exams, visual learners may find they are able to replay the scenario internally. Simple? Yes. But as a visually-inclined student, I can tell you… it works.
How do you cater to visual learners (or other learners) in your online or on-site classes?
Marc Phillips is a junior at Ithaca College’s Park School of Communications, majoring in Integrated Marketing Communications and minoring in Journalism. On campus, Phillips is co-chair of the Park School’s Dean’s Host program and serves as president of Park Peer Advising–his brand new student mentoring initiative in the Park School. Phillips is an Ithaca College Leadership Scholar recipient, was a 2011 summer marketing intern at Pearson Education in Upper Saddle River, N.J., and is a contributing blogger for Pearson Learning Solutions. Learn more about him 
First and foremost, read event e-mails and campus bulletin boards. We tend to treat event invites as spam, when many can be beneficial to your academic enrichment. Campus bulletin boards are littered with so many promotional flyers that you may zone out the clutter all together. Take a moment to look for keywords that interest you in poster headlines.