Effective Communication and Collaberation

Learning teams in the college environment provide a benefit to the adult learner.   The team can be very successful if the leader can communicate and collaborate with all personnel assigned to the group.   To understand how to accomplish effective communication, the group must understand the difference in learning styles and personality traits.   Three of the most predominant learning styles include logical/mathematical, visual/spatial, and naturalistic.   Personality types also have an effect on how the team works together for a common goal.   The traits of a thinker, organizer, and giver personalities combined with the various learning style can lead to success or cause conflict among the members of a team.   To assign tasks properly and work as a team, all members should understand the traits and methods of each personality and learning style.
A person with the logical-mathematical learning style recognizes abstract patterns; reason inductively and deductively, discern relationships and connections, and reason scientifically. They approach learning by organizing material in a logical order, develop a system and find patters, and arrange notes in outline and graph form (Carol Carter, Joyce Bishop, Sarah Kravits, 2007).   To work with that style of student, the leader should deliver information in a thought provoking way.   This could include an open discussion, scientific experiment, or thought provoking questions.   Another way to relate information is to provide the student with an outline of the topic leaving him or her to research and analyze the topics the group is focusing on.
The second learning style is the visual-spatial learner.   This learner perceives and forms objects accurately, recognizes relationships between objects and represents information graphically.   This learner will approach information to learn by drawing mind maps, using color in notes to organize, visualize the material, and develop graphic organizers (Carol Carter, Joyce Bishop, Sarah...