Online Learning Update

October 15, 2011

Using learning styles data to inform online learning design: A study comparing undergraduates, postgraduates and e-educators

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:01 am

by Julie Willems, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology

What are the differences in learning styles between students and educators who teach and/or design their e-learning environments? Are there variations in the learning styles of students at different levels of study? How may we use this learning styles data to inform the design in e-learning environments? This paper details mixedmethods research with three cohorts teaching and learning in e-learning environments in higher education: novice undergraduate e-learners, graduate e-learners, and educators teaching in, or designing for, e-learning environments (Willems, 2010). Quantitative findings from the Index of Learning Styles (ILS) (Felder & Silverman, 1988; Felder & Soloman, 1991, 1994) reflect an alignment of the results between both the graduate e-learner and e-educator cohorts across all four domains of the ILS, suggesting homogeneity of results between these two cohorts. By contrast, there was a statistically significant difference between the results of the graduate and educator cohorts with those of the undergraduate e-learners on two domains: sensing-intuitive (p=0.015) and the global-sequential (p=0.007), uggesting divergent learning style preferences. Qualitative data was also gathered to gain insights on participants’ responses to their learning style results

http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet27/willems.pdf

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