VARK Seven

During September 2006 a team of VARK experts (Abby Hassler, Charles Bonwell, Carol Cadigan, Heather Lander and Faye and Neil Fleming) completed a five-yearly review of the VARK questionnaire. There were some questions identified by Arne Norborg, a Norwegian educational psychologist, that were not performing well and some language and examples needed revising. The team devised several new questions and these were tested on the website during September. We finally settled on 16 questions each with four options. The incorrect use of pronouns which upset some grammarians was removed and the language shoud now be consistent. (There was a good reason to switch from “You” to “I’ in the midst of the old question stems – it increased the likelihood that respondents would reflect on real and remembered situations rather than create imaginary ones.) Now we have the task of re-translating the new questionanire into our other languages and we need help with that please. We will also be offering upgrades to those who have purchased software based on the older VARK versions. The Helpsheets were not affected and remain a strong part of what VARK offers. New statistics based on VARK 7.0 will appear soon. Some are already below. Much of VARK will look and be the same. We want to preserve the percentage of respondents who report (online) that their VARK scores match their perception of their learning preferences. That is consistently around 60%. Expect more news as our new database grows.