Learning about Learning Styles: Can This Improve Engineering Education?

Abstract

There is considerable evidence that individuals vary in the ways they prefer to receive, process and demonstrate their knowledge. Research has found that mismatches between lecturers' expectations of the way students learn and students' own individual preferred learning styles lead to students' lack of motivation and interest, which in turn affects their success, and may cause attrition. This paper describes how a teaching project at the University of South Australia is aiming to achieve improvements in student satisfaction by redesigning approaches to teaching, learning and assessment of engineering subjects to recognise and accommodate a range of learning styles, at the same time extending and improving the range of learning and cognitive skills of all students. A large part of the project involves professional development, to enable the engineering staff who will design and implement these changes to understand the issues surrounding student learning styles. The project also aims to improve individual students' understanding of the ways in which they learn, and thus increase the effectiveness of their learning.