Understanding Student Differences

Journal of Engineering Education, Jan 2005 by Felder, Richard M, Brent, Rebecca

In work done as part of this study, Godleski [20] reported on grades in four sections of the introductory chemical engineering course at Cleveland State University taught by three different instructors. The emphasis in this course is on setting up and solving a wide variety of problems of increasing complexity, with memory and rote substitution in formulas playing a relatively small role. Intuitors would be expected to be at an advantage in this course, and the average grade for the intuitors in all sections was indeed higher than that for sensors. Godlcski obtained similar results for other courses that emphasized intuitive skills, while in the few "solid sensing" courses in the curriculum (such as engineering economics, which tends to be formula-driven) the sensors scored higher.

In a longitudinal study carried out at the University of Western Ontario by Rosati [22, 23], male introverts, intuitors, thinkers, and judgers at the low end of the academic spectrum were found to be more likely to succeed in the first year of the engineering curriculum than were their extraverted, sensing, feeling, and perceiving counterparts. Rosati also observed that the introverts, thinkers, and judgers in the low-performance male population were more likely than the extraverts, feelers, and perceivers to graduate in engineering after four years, although the sensors were more likely than the intuitors to do so. No statistically significant type differences were found for academically strong male students or for female students.

As part of another longitudinal study, Felder [24] administered the MBTI to a group of 116 students taking the introductory chemical engineering course at North Carolina State University. That course and four subsequent chemical engineering courses were taught in a manner that emphasized active and cooperative learning, and type differences in various academic performance measures and attitudes were noted as the students progressed through the curriculum. The results were remarkably consistent with expectations based on type theory:

* Intuitors performed significantly better than sensors in courses with a high level of abstract content, and the converse was observed in courses of a more practical nature. Thinkers consistently outperformed feelers in the relatively impersonal environment of the engineering curriculum, and feelers were more likely to drop out of the curriculum even if they were doing well academically. Faced with the heavy time demands of the curriculum and the corresponding need to manage their time carefully, judgers consistently outperformed perceivers.

* Extraverts reacted more positively than introverts when first confronted with the requirement that they work in groups on homework. (By the end of the study, both groups almost unanimously favored group work.)

* The balanced instruction provided in the experimental course sequence appeared to reduce or eliminate the performance differences previously noted between sensors and intuitors and between extraverts and introverts.