When creating an audio course, you want to make sure your students can understand and engage with your material in a beneficial way. This article will discuss how, as a teacher, you can engage with auditory learners.
What is auditory learning?
Auditory learners are those that learn best by listening to the material. Instead of reading books, they prefer to be lectured on the material; they process information best when heard. Those that prefer auditory learning thrive in classroom settings when all they have to do is focus on what the instructor is saying.
Traits associated with auditory learners
The traits associated with auditory learners typically include the following:
- A good memory of conversations
- Zone out background noise
- Work out problems by talking through them
- Good communicators
- Likes to sing or hum
- Good listeners
How to teach auditory learners with Avocado
To truly engage with auditory learners, you will need to implement verbal repetition, verbal discourse, and social interaction into your course. The bulk of the learning content is already geared towards auditory learners, but how can you engage them even more with your content? Depending on the type of material you are teaching a course on will ultimately dictate how you go about whether or not you include extra materials and what the extra material is.
Examples of engaging auditory learners
Q&A Sessions would have to be in addition to your audio courses with Avocado but would allow for a few beneficial things to take place. First, this would allow you to get feedback from students. If many questions are surrounding a specific topic, could you explain it differently in your course that will lead to less confusion? If not, what are some ways to avoid confusion? Second, this promotes community within your course. Third, you are engaging with your students and helping them learn more information. The online course can often be seen as a one and done type of transaction-based learning that some thrive on, and others do not. By engaging with the students with spoken video or audio content in addition to the audio course, you are bringing back elements of traditional classroom teaching that allow for auditory learners to be so successful.
You can easily build a course page on Facebook and tell everyone when they enroll to request to join the page. It’s your choice how often you would like to have these Q&A sessions, but weekly or monthly could be a good opportunity to engage with your students. Other options besides Facebook include Slack, Mighty Networks, Reddit, or Telegram, could also work.
Build PDFs or include written documents that can provide an opportunity for auditory learners to read the text out loud. Include elements that denote what is important and emphasize that they should repeat these phrases or stats. Try and avoid any confusion about it; make it straight and to the point to help make the process as smooth as possible.
Create an online community for those in your course. By doing this, you will not only benefit in building a foundation for your brand and teachings, but you will also give your students a place to interact with one another. For auditory learners, this can allow them to find a study buddy to go through the material with or to bounce questions off of.
Repetition can be done through listening to the tracks as many times as they need. Encourage your students who are auditory learners to repeatedly go through the content and as many times as they need. Ask follow up questions in the audio or online community, such as, “What did you learn the second time listening to this track compared to the first?” to promote such behaviors.
