Final Report-Impact of Learning Styles
Introduction
In one of the courses I teach, Basic Merchandising, I am always surprised at the vast differences of student grade outcomes. With over 90 students in the class each semester, there is a vast array of student grade outcomes. The reasons for this could be speculated as differences in motivation, readiness, prior coursework, etc. But what about a student's learning style? Does a student's preferred learning style make a difference in the grade outcome of this course?
Research Questions
1) How do students learning style vary in my large lecture class?
2) How do students' preferred learning styles compare to their grade outcome in this class?
Context of Course
The course that was studied is BURTL-127, Basic Merchandising. The course is a required course for students majoring in Retail Merchandising and Management students or Apparel Design and Manufacturing students. The course is also required for the Business Administration Retail Tech Component (a concentration of the like) and required for a Retail Minor. Students who receive minors in Retail mostly major in Business Administration, Apparel Design and Manufacturing, Psychology, or Hotel and Tourism. The course is structured as a freshman level course with basic knowledge, understanding and some application of retail principles. Students are mostly freshman, however, sophomores, juniors and seniors do enroll either as transfer students or as a student who has recently added the retail minor or tech component.
Abbreviated Literature Review
Richard
Felder and Linda Silverman Solomon of
Active vs. Reflective The more active learners prefer learning through first-hand experimentation often in collaborative settings where more reflective learners prefer to think about the subject matter and have personal reflection.
Sensing vs.Intuitive The more sensory learner prefers pragmatic facts and practical procedures while the more intuitive learner prefers more conceptual meanings and theories.
Visual vs. Verbal The more visual learners tend to prefer to see examples to best understand. The more verbal learners prefer lecture or printed materials.
Sequential vs. Global The more sequential learners prefer learning in a series of steps leading to broader understanding. The more global learners prefer to work from conceptual frameworks and fill in the gaps.
The Index of Learning Styles (ILS) survey provides an indication of the student's learning preference and can provide an indication of the preferred learning style of the class as a community. Everyone is active, reflective, sensing, or intuitive sometimes. The preference for any one of the learning styles may be strong, moderate or mild.
Methods
Students were given the website link of the ILS survey as well as explained what the goals of taking the survey were for. Not only were the results of the survey intended to be a part of my SOTL study, but it was intended as a resource for their own personal understanding of their preferred learning style. Students were given 5 points extra credit (less than 1% impact on final grade) to complete the survey and to share their rankings by printing out the learning style results page.
The survey scales the learning style preference by ranking the learning style preference 1-11. A higher number indicates a stronger preference for that particular learning style. The lower the number indicates a more moderate to mild preference for the learning style. Also, a lower number indicates more adaptability by the student to the reverse learning style.
Results of the student ILS surveys were tabulated in an Excel spreadsheet and compared to the end of the semester grade outcome. Charts and graphs were created (as I somewhat prefer visual learning myself) to illustrate students preferred learning as a community as well as how the four dimensions compared to final grade outcomes.
Results
Learning Style Preferences
There was a 74% response rate of students completing the survey and submitting their results (70 out of 94 students). Not surprising, there was a vast array of preferred learning styles reported through the learning styles results. (Charts 1-4)
Overall the class is mostly comprised of active, sensing, visual and sequential learners. Visual learning was the strongest most preferred method of learning, followed by active, then sequential, then sensing. The least preferred learning method was verbal, followed by global, then reflective then intuitive. (Table 1)
Strong preferences of a learning style are comprised of an individual score of 5 or more. Overall students had strong preferences for visual learning, followed by sequential learning.
Sensing (57%) and the reversed learning style of intuitive (43%) were the closer of any two opposing learning styles. This means that overall there isn't a strong preference for either style and the students can more easily adapt to either style of teaching. Visual (80%) and the reversed learning style of verbal (20%) were the most polarized learning style preferences. Overall students as a community strongly prefer visual learning than verbal learning.
Charts 1-4
LSI
Results
Table 1
Learning Style Preferences
|
|
Active Vs. Reflective |
Sensing vs. Intuitive |
Visual vs. Verbal |
Sequential vs. Global |
|
Overall |
66% vs. 34% |
57% vs. 43% |
80% vs. 20% |
69% vs. 31% |
|
Strong Preference |
27% vs. 13% |
30% vs. 20% |
67% vs. 3% |
39% vs. 9% |
Learning Style compared to Grade Outcome
Students that had grade outcomes of 90% or more overall had slight preferences of active, intuitive, visual and sequential learning styles. But for the most part, these students mostly scored in the low numbers of their preferred learning styles, indicating a mild or moderate preference. Students who earned a grade outcome of below 80% had a learning style preference of active, sensing, visual and sequential. Overall the active and visual learning style preferences were strong. Students whose grade outcome was 70% or below indicated through the ILS results a very strong preference for these same learning styles (active, sensing, visual and sequential). (Charts 5-8)
Chart 5
Chart 6
Chart 7
Chart 8
Conclusions
Overall the students preferred active, sensing, visual and sequential learning. An introductory course and large course of 90 plus students such as Basic Merchandising more easily lends itself to a lecture style of teaching. However, active learning can be incorporated in creative ways. Additional active learning techniques will need to be developed in this course to aid student learning.
The preference for sensing learning by the students is a good match to this introductory course of learning facts, principles and application. Much of the class discussion is relating principles to "the real world" which is one way sensing learners learn best. Students perform better when the motivation to learn is intrinsic; they want to learn for their own future, not just for my class and for a grade (Ficher, 1985).
Felder and Silverman stated that most people are visual learners, so it wasn't a surprise that visual learning was the strongest and most preferred method of learning by the students in this class. Since visual learners retain what they see, a continued effort to include pictures, diagrams, flow charts, time lines, and films in the classroom will be necessary to help students learn. Felder and Silverman found that everyone learns more when information is presented both visually and verbally so even Power Point lectures that are augmented by inserted pictures and diagrams will aid the visual learners but not forget the verbal learners in this course. The very strong preference of visual learning may be increasing in younger generations and learners through the shift in the culture of media abundance. However, further research and literature review is needed to substantiate this statement.
Most college courses are taught in a sequential manner and this course for the most part is also. Students reported a strong preference of sequential learning. Most of the new concepts and principles are presented in a sequential manner and then discussed how it relates to the "big picture". Students can retain and recall new learning if they have something to "hook" it to (Gagne). Students demonstrate significant learning when they are able to retrieve and relate the new learning to other areas and make associations. The different cognitive levels of learning such as knowledge, then comprehension, then application, then analysis and finally synthesis (Bloom, 1956) builds off (or "hooks") to the former level. Therefore, some global thinking skills need to be encouraged as this course builds upon knowledge learned and is a prerequisite for many of the student's future courses. The more global thinking that can begin by seeing the "big picture" will help the students throughout this course and their higher level courses.
Most of the students (over 90%) reported at least one strong (score of 5 or more) preferred style of learning. This is typical of young adult learners. As the learner matures they become more adaptable and can somewhat adjust to the teaching style. They may still have a preferred learning style, however it is more moderate or mild than strong. To be most effective as a learner, students need to be able to function in both ways.
The students that were able to function both ways, who only reported mild to moderate preferred learning styles were the students that earned higher grade outcomes. However, it is not known if these students were freshman, sophomores, juniors or seniors.
The reason for asking the students to report their preferred learning style to me was shared with the students as well as a reminder that the results do not reflect a student's ability or inability to learn a subject or success in a specific career path. It also shouldn't be used as an excuse for a bad grade on an assignment, exam or class. Students were encouraged to further consult the Felder and Silverman website on learning styles to learn more about their own preferred learning styles as well as ways to help themselves be better learners within their preferred learning styles.
The ILS survey was given to students at the beginning of 4th quarter. In the future, students may benefit from taking the survey earlier in the semester to learn of their learning style. This may assist the students in recognizing their own strengths and weaknesses and how to best prepare themselves and study.
I took the ILS survey as well to evaluate my own preferred learning style as teachers have been known to teach to their own preferred learning style or teach how they remember being taught themselves. My personal results as a learner were not too different from my Basic Merchandising class learners. My results indicated a mild preference for reflective and sequential learning, and a moderate to strong preference for visual and sensing learning. The only difference from my preferred learning style and the students is my reflective preference to their active preference. However, since my preference is only mild, I should be able to easily move more teaching to cater to more active learning styles. As previously mentioned, the development of more active learning techniques although it a large class, will need to be implemented to aid in student learning.
Anticipated Further Study and Application
Further study of student preferred learning styles may be done at the start of each semester. Additional and improved applied learning and visual learning techniques may be implemented. Analysis of grade outcomes and if there are positive shifts may indicate that improved teaching can result in increased student learning and higher grade outcomes.