“Learning is not the moment when information is delivered. Learning is the moment when the mind, the hands, and the heart become involved enough to turn information into understanding.” – MJ Martin
Introduction
“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn” is often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, and whether or not the attribution is exact, the message is powerful. Learning is not simply the transfer of information from one person to another. It is a process of attention, connection, practice, reflection, and application. Most people do not truly learn by hearing something once. They learn when an idea becomes meaningful, when they can connect it to experience, and when they are given a reason to use it.
The Learning Process
For most people, learning begins with curiosity or necessity. A person either wants to know something or needs to know it. From there, the mind begins to build a framework. New information is compared with what the learner already understands. If the information feels abstract or disconnected, it is often forgotten. If it connects to a real problem, a familiar example, or a practical task, it has a better chance of being remembered.
Repetition also matters. The first exposure may create awareness, but repeated exposure builds confidence. Practice turns information into skill. Reflection turns experience into understanding. This is why involvement is so important. A person may be told how to fix a machine, taught the theory behind the repair, or shown a diagram of the parts. But when that person actually holds the tool, makes the adjustment, observes the result, and corrects a mistake, learning becomes real.
Visual Learning
Visual learners tend to understand best when they can see relationships, patterns, diagrams, photographs, charts, and written explanations. A visual learner may grasp a concept more quickly when it is mapped out on a whiteboard than when it is explained only through speech. In technical subjects, visual learning is especially powerful. A process flow, a wiring diagram, a graph, or a labelled image can compress a large amount of information into something the mind can organize.
Visual learning is not just about pretty pictures. It is about structure. It helps learners see where things fit, how parts relate, and what sequence matters. For many people, seeing the whole picture first makes the details easier to absorb.
Auditory Learning
Auditory learners benefit from spoken explanation, discussion, storytelling, lectures, podcasts, and dialogue. They often learn by hearing ideas expressed clearly and by talking through the material themselves. A good teacher can make complex ideas easier by using tone, emphasis, pacing, and analogy. The spoken word can carry enthusiasm, urgency, and meaning in a way that flat text sometimes cannot.
Discussion is a particularly strong form of auditory learning. When learners ask questions, explain ideas back, or debate a point, they are actively processing the material. This is much stronger than passively listening. Hearing information matters, but speaking it and testing it in conversation makes it more durable.
Kinaesthetic Learning
Kinaesthetic learners learn through doing. They need movement, handling, building, testing, practicing, and direct experience. This style is common in trades, sports, aviation, medicine, engineering, music, and many forms of technical work. A person can read about flying an aircraft, watch a video, and listen to an instructor, but the learning becomes deeper when they sit in the cockpit and coordinate hands, feet, eyes, and judgment.
Kinaesthetic learning often includes mistakes, and that is part of its value. Safe mistakes create feedback. Feedback creates adjustment. Adjustment creates competence.
Involvement Creates Understanding
The strongest learning usually blends all three approaches. A learner may see a diagram, hear an explanation, and then practice the task. While people may prefer one style, effective learning is rarely limited to only one channel. The best teachers and trainers use multiple methods because human beings are complex. We remember more when ideas are seen, heard, discussed, practiced, and applied.
True learning is participation. Being told may create awareness. Being taught may create memory. Being involved creates ownership. And when a learner owns the experience, the lesson becomes part of them.
About the Author:
Michael Martin is the Vice President of Technology with Metercor Inc., a Smart Meter, IoT, and Smart City systems integrator based in Canada. He has more than 40 years of experience in systems design for applications that use broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless, and digital communications technologies. He is a business and technology consultant. He was a senior executive consultant for 15 years with IBM, where he worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He is a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN: TSX).
Martin served on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO: TSX) and on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX: TSX.V). He has served as a Member, SCC ISO-IEC JTC 1/SC-41 – Internet of Things and related technologies, ISO – International Organization for Standardization, and as a member of the NIST SP 500-325 Fog Computing Conceptual Model, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) [now Ontario Tech University] and on the Board of Advisers of five different Colleges in Ontario – Centennial College, Humber College, George Brown College, Durham College, Ryerson Polytechnic University [now Toronto Metropolitan University]. For 16 years he served on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section.
He holds three master’s degrees – in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has three undergraduate diplomas and seven major certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology. He has completed over 80 next generation MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) [aka Micro Learning] continuous education programs in a wide variety of topics, including: Economics, Python Programming, Internet of Things, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive systems, Blockchain, Agile, Power BI, Big Data, Design Thinking, Security, Indigenous Canada awareness, and more.
Martin in a volunteer, a photographer, a learner, a technologist, a philosophizer, and a romantic optimist.