While in college, I worked as a tutor on campus. One thing that we gave each new client was a learn styles inventory. It basically helped us as tutors play to the strengths of the client. You can probably find a variant of the paper/pencil test we used online.

In my blog reading, I came across a post on bloggerdygook. In the post there was the link to one of those nifty little online quiz type things. The quiz is here. It’s not quite the same as the learning styles test we gave, it also addresses left/right brain preferences. But you can still glean some interesting information about yourself from it.

And here are my results:

Your Brain Usage Profile:

Auditory : 50%
Visual : 50%
Left : 68%
Right : 31%

Kathryn, you are somewhat left-hemisphere dominant with a balanced preference for auditory and visual inputs. Because of your “centrist” tendencies, the distinctions between various types of brain usage are somewhat blurred.

Your tendency to be organized and logical and attend to details is reasonably well-established which should afford you success regardless of your chosen field of endeavor, unless it requires total spontaneity and ability to improvise, your weaker traits. However, you are far from rigid or overcontrolled. You possess a degree of individuality, perceptiveness, and trust in your intuition to function at much more sophisticated levels than most.

Having given sufficient attention to detail, you can readily perceive the larger aspects and implications of a situation or of learning. You are functional and practical, but can blend abstraction and theory into your framework readily.

The equivalence of your auditory and visual learning orientation gives you two equally effective sensory input systems, each with distinctive features. You can process both unidimensionally and multidimensionally with equal facility. When needed, you sequence material while at other times you “intake it all” and store it for processing later.

Your natural ability to use your senses is also synthesized in your way of learning. You can be reflective in your approach, absorbing material in a non-aggressive manner, and at other times voracious in seeking out stimulation and experience.

Overall you tend to be somewhat more critical of yourself than is necessary and avoid enjoying life too much because of a sense of duty. You feel somewhat constrained and tend to sometimes restrict your expressiveness. In any given situation, you will opt for the rational, and learning of almost any type should be easy for you. You might need certain ideas explained to you in order to fit them into your scheme of things, but you’re at least open to that!

The interesting this is that I mentioned to my Linux tutor that I sometimes wonder if I’m thick because there are some things that I just don’t quite grasp. Part of it is my perfectionism and the impossibly high standards I hold for myself, especially in learning type situations. But Eric pointed out to me that I try to put together a big picture of how it all works and pay attention to as many details as I can think of. He also noted that this is good, mostly, until it gets in the way. His impression of my learning style seems to fit in nicely with the results of the quiz.

I know that the quiz really is mostly for fun. I have no data on the reliability nor the validity of it. Plus the idea of right brain versus left brain usually fall under scrutiny in the psychological world. But it was an interesting way to spent 10 or 15 minutes.