Introduction: what?, why?, where? and how?
Facilitate means ‘to make something ... easy or easier’ (Crowther, 1995, p. 414). At times I wonder if we are truly making things easier when we look at how we facilitate outdoor and experiential learning programs. This paper is based upon research conducted within the context of a PhD that focused on the facilitation of corporate experiential learning programs. The motivation for this study was my own personal dissatisfaction with the dominant facilitation model that I had experienced and observed. This model typically involves people sitting in circles and talking. This study led me to look at how people prefer to learn and to consider a learning style model that addresses much broader issues such as when and where people prefer to learn. In exploring these topics I have also begun to ask questions about who is writing our truth. As Bell suggests, ‘the
subject, or author, of Western definitions of rationality was always those with access to the texts and their transmission: masculine, Caucasian, well-educated, and heterosexual’ (Bell, 1993, p. 21). From my observation at the ORIC Research Symposium, 2002, there were 26 people attending of whom 20 were males. Of the 11 presenter; eight were males and three were females. All highly educated (e.g.: enrolled in PhDs or university lecturers). We continue the tradition today.

In this paper I have deviated from ‘tradition’ and chosen to review the visual (as opposed to written) literature that dominates one sphere of experiential learning. I
then move onto a summary of a survey conducted of thirty-six people who are involved in experiential learning to a consideration of what activities/methods people use to facilitate learning. The third aspect is consideration of the results of the Learning Styles Analysis of seventy-three postgraduate students. A discussion follows that considers the possible implications for the facilitation of experiential learning. This paper does not seek to provide all the answers, what it does aim to do is to ask questions about our practice – just as we would ask of participants in programs we facilitate.

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This literature review draws on visual images rather than narrative. The use of visual images as a source of information has its limitations, what is shown is determined by the interaction of the artist/photographer, the authors and editors; what is included may be as important as what is excluded (Grbich, 1999). This inclusion/exclusion includes my own choice of images, why these over other images?

The images, as a representation of a dominant paradigm, are public images drawn from three books written by white North American males. Using Bell’s (1993) categories of writers of truth they definitely fulfil the categories of masculine, Caucasian and well-educated (I am not in a position to comment on the final category).

The authors of these books are influential in the literature, they are often referred to in other articles on facilitation and leadership practice, particularly literature from North America (e.g.: Gass & Gillis 1995; Priest, 1995; Estrellas, 1996; Ringer, 1999; Hogan, 2002; Sugerman, 2001; Martin, Leberman, & Neill, 2002. Each book has had an impact upon my own professional development and practice, in my case, the impact has been to stand back and question what I do.

The similarity between the pictures is obvious: all are in circles, most people are sitting down and all situations are outdoors. There are people who are in body positions that may suggest discomfort (this is not limited to physical or emotional discomfort), either turned away, sitting askew and arms folded. But from the images alone we cannot know what people’s experiences truly are. We do not know what the impact of the location may have upon that experience; what is their sense of place. The location, for some, could be a place of power and inspiration, for others, threatening and intimidating.

These images, in conjunction with my own experiences acted as part of the trigger for my research. This is supported by two surveys of facilitators’ practice, conducted in 2002.

Learning styles
‘Learning style is the way in which human beings begin to concentrate on, absorb, process and retain new and difficult information’ (Dunn & Dunn, 1993, p. 2). Learning style is one way of seeing the world, in seeing people through this we do so at the risk of missing some other valuable insights; people are more than our analysis of them. The Learning Style Analysis (LSA) has been developed over more than twenty years drawing on research by Rita and Kenneth Dunn (1993) at St John’s University. Their initial emphasis was upon school-ages participants but in later years instruments such as the LSA and the Working Styles Analysis and Teaching Style Analysis have broadened the work to cover all ages (Prashnig, 1996).

Prashnig (1996) notes that the LSA has a general subdivision between those aspects of learning styles that are biological and those that are learned (conditioned). The iologically determined aspects are: brain dominance, sensory modalities; physical needs, and environment. These are considered difficult to change, and mismatches may impact upon motivation, persistence and responsibility and may ultimately lead to stress. The learned (conditioned) aspects are social (working groups) and attitudes. The learned are not as stable as the biological aspects and can change quite rapidly. Depending upon the environment, preferences may become strengths when used wisely. Following is a
description of the main elements of the LSA as presented by Prashnig (1996).

Sensory Modalities
The four major categories of sensory modalities are: auditory, visual, tactile and kinaesthetic. These are further subdivided by whether they are primarily internal or external as follows:

Auditory involves hearing and listening, this may be external (talking, discussing) or internal (self talk, inner dialogue). The visual involves words and pictures and may also be external (seeing, watching) or internal (visualising, imagining). Tactile involves touching, manipulating and handling, while kinaesthetic can be external (experience, doing) or internal (feeling, intuition). These categories have similarities with accelerated learning and neurolinguistic programming (e.g. Rose, 1985; O'Connor & Seymour; 1994).

Physical Needs
The key categories under physical needs are: mobility (stationary or movement needed), intake (food and drink); and time of day (early morning/late morning, afternoon and evening). A high need for intake combined with a high need for tactile learning creates the perfect scenario for one to be a smoker! (Prashnig, 1996).

Environment
The physical learning environment in the LSA includes: sound; lighting levels; temperature; and the formality of the work area. This can be evidenced with people who prefer working in the quiet, formal setting of a library, compared to those who prefer the noise, informality and activity of a café or the home lounge room.

Social Groupings
The social context of learning may be a powerful force. The LSA highlights preferences for working: alone: in pairs; with peers (where people have similarities in skills and/or experience); and teams (where allocation to the group may be outside of your control).

Attitudes
The attitudes of the learners include: their motivation (self starting through to external pressure); persistence and spontaneity; conformity; responsibility; degrees of structure; and variety. A learner who has a greater sense of control over their learning (content and situation) may be better placed to learn (Fazey & Lawson, 2000).

Survey of practice
The survey was conducted within two forums during 2002: a postgraduate class called: Facilitation Techniques in Outdoor Education (EDGP 921/3) and a workshop entitled: Facilitating Learning: Creating space for the individual to learn conducted at an International conference in South East Asia. The questionnaire consisted of nine questions that related to the participants’ current practice (by asking them to rank their use of seventeen different reflective activities) as well as their knowledge of, and personal learning styles. Table 1 summarise the workshop participants, Table 2 summarises the top six reflective activities used by the participants when facilitating experiential learning while Table 3 summarises the participants’ preferred sensory modalities (one aspect of the LSA) as measured either by the LSA or a simplified assessment instrument that focuses only on sensory modalities (Connor, 2002). These two groups had a broad range of experience, from none to over forty years, with an average of nearly seven years. Given that the thirty-six participants represented twelve different nationalities, together they present quite a diverse range of knowledge, experience and cultural perspectives.

Table 2 lists the top six reflective activities used (from a list of seventeen) as ranked by the thirty-six participants. As has been my experience and my theorising, the dominant activities were group discussions – a predominantly auditory method. Twenty three people ranked whole group discussions as their number one or two most commonly used activity (63.9%) with 28 of the 36 using the method at some time (77.8%). Small group discussions are the second most popular activity being in the top two for twenty-five participants (69.4%) and at least 31 respondents (86.1%) using this activity at some time.



For this survey, learning style preferences were assessed using the LSA for participants in EDGP 912/3 and Connor’s Learning Style Assessment (2002), which only covers the three sensory modalities of auditory, visual and kinaesthetic, used for the conference workshop. The choice to use a simpler version in the workshop was based upon time; EDGP 912/3 was conducted over a full semester while the workshop was ninety minutes. Further investigation of the consistency of the two instruments may be of future benefit. Table 3 highlights the overwhelming preference of males for either a visual or Kinaesthetic sensory modality, while for women the preference was firstly visual and then auditory. In this sample, only eight people (20% of number 1 rankings) preferred
an auditory sensory modality style despite the dominant practice of using that style when facilitating groups as indicated in Table 2.



Insights from the Learning Style Analysis(LSA)
The LSA was conducted with seventy-three postgraduate students enrolled at the
University of Wollongong in one of four postgraduate classes across the Faculties of Commerce and Education plus a postgraduate research group from 1999 to 2002. This is an opportunistic sample (Grbich, 1999) as the classes were chosen as the author was involved in conducting the classes and the LSA formed part of the subject content.

The results of all 73 participants is summarised in the following tables, with an analysis of variance conducted across age, gender, nationality and subject choice.



The predominance of females (61.6%) reflects the enrolment record of subjects such as MGMT 908 and MGMT 946 which, from my experience of these subjects over a two-three year period, tend to attract mostly female enrolments.

Tables 5 and 6 present the learning styles preferences and non preferences of all 73 participants as indicated by their LSAs. The results have been further analysed by the categories of Australian and non-Australian, and then female and male to provide a basis for exploring what differences may exist.





Table 7 presents those areas with differences of 25 percentage points or more between Australians/Non-Australians and males/females. The most notable differences indicated purely by these percentage differences indicate that the most number of differences exist between the groups of Australian and non- Australian participants. Using analyses of variance (such as ANOVA and t-tests) these differences are investigated further.


Analyses of Variance
The results of each individual learning styles analysis were further analysed. Data were coded by allocating numerical values to the different preference levels. It is acknowledged that these preference level categories do not reflect discrete categories, rather they are ordinal categories. However, while this presents a limitation, the process may still highlight aspects that can be investigated in future studies. The numerical values assigned to the levels were:
1= non-preference
2= strong adaptability
3= flexibility
4= preference
5= strong preference

A range of analyses of variance was conducted to explore the impact of aspects such as age, gender, nationality and subject choice on the learning styles preferences.

Impact of age range
A one-way between-groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to explore the impact of age on learning style preferences with respect to sensory modalities (i.e. auditory, visual, tactile and kinaesthetic). All participants were divided into three groups according to their age to present three groups with a similar number of participants viz:
Group 1: 25 years or less (n=26)
Group 2: 26 to 32 years and (n=20)
Group 3: 33 years or greater (n=25)
Of the 71 responses (two were excluded as age was not indicated) there were no
significant differences identified.

A further one-way between groups analysis was conducted to determine the impact of age on learning styles preferences for all women (n=45). A statistically significant difference at p<.05 was indicated for the three age groups {F(2,42)=3.482,p=0.04}. The effect size, using eta squared, was 0.14 indicating a large effect size however this is within the context of a small sample size. Post-hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD test indicated that the mean score for Group 1 women (M = 4.61, SD = 0.85) was significantly different for Group 3 women (M = 3.5, SD = 1.51) for their preference for low light. Group 2 did not differ significantly from either Group 1 or 3 in any area of learning preferences.

A one-way between-groups analysis of variance conducted to determine the impact of age on learning styles preferences for all men (n=26) indicated no significant difference on any criteria.

A one-way between-groups analysis of variance conducted to determine the impact of age on learning styles preferences for all Australian students (male and female) (n=41) indicated a statistically significant difference at p<.05 for the three age groups {F(2,38)=3.898, p=0.029} in their preference for seeing and also for their preference for self-starting {F92,38)=4.432, p=0.019}. The effect size, calculated at 0.17 for seeing and 0.188 for self-starting using eta-squared, indicates a large effect size. Post-hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD test indicated that the mean score for Group 2 (M= 3.46, SD= 0.97) was significantly different from Group 3 (M= 2.33, SD= 1.08) for their preference for seeing. Group 1 (M=2.08, SD=1.32) did not differ significantly from either Group 2 or 3. For self- starting there was a significant difference between the means of Group 1 (M=4.2, SD=1.03) and Group 3 (M=4.89, SD=0.32). Group 2 did not differ significantly from either Group 1 or Group 3.

Impact of gender
An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the learning style preferences for females (n=45) and males (n=28). A significant difference was noted for preferences for being stationary by females (M=2.82, SD=1.24) and males (M=1.86, SD=1.04), the magnitude of the differences in means was large (eta squared=.139). The preference for movement by females (M=3.00, SD=1.41) and males (M=3.71, SD=1.27), with the magnitude of the differences in means was considered moderate (eta squared=.06).

An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the learning style preferences for Australian females (n=26) and Australian males (n=16) in the study. As with the t-test of all participants, a significant difference was noted for preferences for being stationary with females (M=2.81, SD=1.36) and males (M=1.88, SD=1.20) - the Magnitude of the differences in means was moderate to large (eta squared=.113). The preferences for movement by females (M=2.96, SD=1.40) and by males (M=3.88, SD=1.31), with the magnitude of the differences in means was also considered moderate to large (eta squared=.10). A significant difference was also identified for a preference for a cool environment by females (M=1.96, SD=1.22) and by males (M=3.06, SD=1.29) with a large effect size (eta squared=.16).

Impact of nationality
The impact of nationality on learning style preferences was investigated by comparing Australian participants to participants in each of the other nationalities. This contrasts with the results presented in Table 5 and Table 6 where all non-Australian nationalities were grouped together. In seeking to analyse variances it was considered more appropriate to examine individual nationality differences, rather than assume that all non-Australian nationalities (Asian, European, and American) learn the same. However, with an uneven distribution and very small sample sizes, the insight gained from the results is necessarily limited. The analysis would have been conducted had there been a
more even distribution across the groups. However the only four nationalities
with more than one student were: Australian (n=48), Indonesian (n=2), Thai (n=5)
and Chinese (n=4). This was inadequate to proceed further.

Impact of subject choice
A one-way between-groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to explore the impact of subject choice on all aspects of the learning style analysis. Of the 73 responses, there were no significant differences identified in any of the learning style preference criteria.

Discussion
Of the 73 individuals whose Learning Style Analyses I have been able to study, all of whom have been postgraduate students, predominantly in classes I have taught (70 of the 73) there is little significant difference between groups on variables such as gender, age and nationality except in areas such as physical needs (movement), environment (lighting and temperature) and sensory modalities (seeing). What this analysis of the LSAs does not address is the alignment of the individual learning style preferences with the way in which the class is conducted. While there is a Training Skills Analysis available that is based upon similar constructs as the LSA, it is not possible to place one next to
the other and compare and contrast the learning preferences with the training style. Other themes that could be explored further include the role of space (social, emotional and cognitive), readiness or preparedness of the learners as well as the impact of place (physical).

The analysis by nationality is inconclusive due to the small numbers involved. Further study with larger sample sizes will enable an investigation of differences by nationality to have more meaning. Differences could be investigated by geographic regions, such as south east Asia, southern Europe and even North America. Further research could be conducted according to enrolment mode, as well as levels of work experience. Another study could also be conducted around the reliability of the LSA over time, conducting further assessments three, six or more months later. While this may not support a test of reliability of the LSA it may support the idea that learning styles do change over time. Further study of groups outside of the university system, which may attract people who fit within a university learning situation, may reveal a greater range of differences in learning style preference as indicated by the LSA.

Questions you may ask as you plan
The breadth of the Learning Styles Analysis raises some questions that may be considered by the facilitator when designing a program. These go beyond the more usual focus upon activity selection and extend to other areas of the program that connect with an individual’s preferred learning style. Questions that could be included in the planning process are:

Where? What environment or location may best support the desired learning? When? What time of day may be best for learning things that are new and/or difficult?
How? What sensory modalities are being covered through the program design?
Who? How is the range of social groupings being used throughout the program?
Why? What are the motivations and attitudes of the participants, facilitators and supervisors that will support or undermine learning?
What else? What other physical needs such as temperature, formality, movement and intake are considered in the program design?


References
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