VARK Model in Higher Education: Benefits and Criticisms Explored

This essay discusses the importance of study skills in higher education, focusing on the VARK model (Visual, Auditory, Reading/Writing, Kinesthetic) and its various learning styles. It explores the benefits of each style, such as visual learning through diagrams, auditory learning through lectures, readi...Read More

Study Skills for Higher
Education

Higher education is one of the major achievements in life of a person. Study skills helps a
person in developing his own personal approach to learn. These skills are not for a specific
subject. This is very important as it helps in getting a better job. It has now became one of the
necessity (Villarreal and Martinez, 2018). The mindset of the society is that people having higher
education is more reputed. Higher education is one of the most important aspect in life every
person. This essay will discuss the various importance of learning styles and what are the various
learning styles in VARK model. Furthermore, the criticism of the VARK model will also be
explained in this essay that what are the drawbacks of this model.
Learning styles in VARK model
The VARK model basically explains about four categories of learners in which people
are divided in. Fleming introduced this model in 1987 to help the students and other learners to
understand their learning preferences (VARK model. 2022). VARK model is consisted with
visual, auditory, reading and kinesthetic learning styles.
Visual, this learning style helps the learners by making them use visual resources to learn
from. A person can visually learn and understand something by just looking at the things. This
includes learning from pictures, charts and diagrams. This style shows the importance of
presentation of anything that people use to learn from. Auditory, this style of learning describes a
method in which people can learn by listening to information. People who do not have interest in
learning by visual or any other method chooses this. Resources like Lecturers and audio books is
the best as it is easy to understand information from that and it also saves time (Medeiros,
Ramalho and Falcão, 2018). The one who does not have time to read books chooses to listen to
it. Modern technology has evolved so much as there are audio books available from which
people can learn quickly.
Reading and writing, it is one of the most used method by people to learn. This is the
most classic method that helps in learning by making lists, reading textbooks and taking or
creating notes. This method can benefit the learners as they take a large amount of information
and creates notes or presentation themselves which creates a discipline in their life. kinesthetic,
this is the style in which people use their senses to learn anything. People who obtain
information by physical approach is called kinesthetic learners. This is one of the most

successful method of learning and understanding any information as it provides actual
information from physically being present there.
VARK model is one of the very important model for making the learning easier for the
students. This method can be used by teachers so that they can help their students with strategies
and the plans they can use to learn better based on their learning type (Imporance of VARK.
2022). Teachers can help their students in choosing their desired method of learning so that it
will be easier for the student to study effectively. Students can use this technique to develop their
skills and become expert in the style that they are interested to learn from. The VARK model is
very important in its own ways.
The main importance of this model is it creates and provides different methods of
learning for learners as every person does not have a same mind. Every method of VARK model
plays an important role. The visual method of VARK method is very helpful for students. This is
one of the easiest way to understand something as the only requirement in this method is to look
at the information and understand from it. This helps in understanding visually just by looking at
the resources (Alkooheji, and Al-Hattami, 2018). There are many benefits of learning something
visually as there is direct understanding of any information by looking at it. For example, Power
point presentations, graphs and charts are the best way for a person to understand visually.
Same factor is applies to the Auditory method that lectures and audio books can make the
person understand even better who prefers to learn by listening to information. There are a lot of
benefits of this method such as, the person can listen to the audio as many times as he wants to
and can understand the information in multiple trials. This method provides the person ease of
understanding in his available time and place or by attending classes and listening to the lecture
by actually being present in the class (Mirza and Khurshid, 2020).
The auditory method is very time saving as a person can anytime listen to recorded
lectures, audio books and audio notes. The reading and writing method is also very important
method of VARK model as it helps in absorbing information and enhancing performance.
Reading and writing method is important in school as well as for life. This is the most used
method of learning as it has the highest chances of making a person understand better. This is
one of the most used method in schools. Teacher prefers to teach their students with this method
by giving them paragraphs of books to read or home works. Students by using this method
improves their understanding abilities at an early age.

The kinesthetic model also plays an important role. This method motivates people to
discover knowledge and information themselves. In this method People engage themselves in
learning from movement to absorb knowledge and understanding the information themselves
(Dutsinma and Temdee, 2020). This is the most suitable and important method for the people
who prefer to be physically more active instead of learning things from already provided
resources. The method creates a willingness in people to actually learn physical movements. For
example when a child is learning to ride bike or swing something he is using movements and
trials instead of learning from the traditional methods. This method helps in improving the
analytical skills of a person by making him learn from actual experiment and errors.
However, on the other side there are also some negative points of VARK model as it has
been criticized by many experts for some of its negative points. This method have been
questioned a lot of times and have been criticized extensively (Villarreal and Martinez, 2018). Its
negative point is that the VARK model does not give a lot of directions to educators as there are
a lot of unique information to understand. It has been stated by many experts that the learning
styles only look good in theory. The learning styles when implemented in real life failed to make
any positive impact in day to day learning.
The experts say that this method is not very useful as it labels students for having a specific
learning style which can be a negative impact on learning. There are a lot of experts who says
that the VARK model is too restrictive. Only 39% people out of 100% who have tested this
method says that this method fits the best only in one single category (Criticism of VARK. 2022).
Using this model makes the educators or individual force a learner moving into only one
direction of learning. This method is also stated as too simplistic as it is very easy for VARK to
categorize individuals into four areas. Every method has its own disadvantages.
Visual method has a disadvantage that it can be difficult to learn just by visual
information as sometimes the guidance and explanation of an expert is required. The visual
method makes the learners struggle in listening to the information and retaining it as they are
only expert in understanding information by visual means. Auditory method is also being
criticized as it is only dependent on verbal communication and learning (Alkooheji and Al-
Hattami, 2018). This method is also proven to be a negative method as the information which is
not included in audio books and lectures is not clear to the learner. The reading and writing

method is also been criticized as it is hard for a few people who do not show any interest in this
method (Mirza and Khurshid, 2020). The lack of proper materials and information can be a
negative impact of this method. Kinesthetic model is also being criticized for being too practical.
This method creates a mindset for the people that they can only learn if they practice. This is also
the negative point of this method that people can only learn if they practice the knowledge and
retain it by actually using their physical movements.
Thus, it can be concluded that the higher educations is one of the important aspect of life
of any person. There is importance of VARK model in studying skills as it provides learning
methods to the learners. The model is also being criticized as it has a lot of disadvantages which
makes the model less favourable. Importance and criticism is both shown in this essay that the
importance of this model is it provides many ways of learning. It has been criticized on its
negative points that it did not make positive effects in real life. The conclusion can be drawn out
that the model is both positive and negative as it contains various factors which is being kept in
front of experts for analysing.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Alkooheji, L. and Al-Hattami, A., 2018. Learning Style Preferences among College
Students. International Education Studies. 11(10). pp.50-63.
Dutsinma, L.I.F. and Temdee, P., 2020. VARK learning style classification using decision tree
with physiological signals. Wireless Personal Communications. 115(4). pp.2875-2896.
Medeiros, R.P., Ramalho, G.L. and Falcão, T.P., 2018. A systematic literature review on
teaching and learning introductory programming in higher education. IEEE
Transactions on Education. 62(2). pp.77-90.
Mirza, M.A. and Khurshid, K., 2020. Impact of VARK learning model at tertiary level
education. International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences. 14(5).
pp.354-361.
Villarreal, V. and Martinez, A., 2018. Assessing study skills in college students: A review of
three measures. Journal of College Student Development. 59(5). pp.629-635.
Online
Criticism of VARK. 2022. [Online]. Available through <https://www.verywellmind.com/vark-
learning-styles-2795156#:~:text=Kinesthetic%20Learning%20Style%3F-,Criticisms,be
%20a%20hindrance%20to%20learning.>
Importance of VARK. 2022. [Online]. Available through
<https://blog.definedlearning.com/blog/varkandpersonalizedlearning#:~:text=The
%20VARK%20model%20can%20be,that%20benefits%20them%20the%20most.>
VARK model. 2022. [Online]. Available through <https://blog.definedlearning.com/blog/what-
are-vark-learning-styles>
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