Understanding Student Differences

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

Traditional science and engineering instruction focuses almost exclusively on lecturing, a style comfortable for only Type 2 learners. Effective instruction involves teaching around the cycle-motivating each new topic (Type 1), presenting the basic information and methods associated with the topic (Type 2), providing opportunities for practice in the methods (Type 3), and encouraging exploration of applications (Type 4).

A faculty training program based on the KoIb learning style model was initiated at Brigham Young University in 1989 [28]. About a third of the engineering faculty was trained in teaching around the cycle. The volunteers implemented the approach in their courses, reviewed videotapes of their teaching, and discussed their successes and problems in focus groups. Many courses were redesigned; instructors-including a number who did not participate in the original training-used a variety of teaching methods in addition to formal lecturing; discussions about teaching became a regular part of department faculty meetings; and several faculty members presented and published education-related papers. Articles describing the program do not indicate the extent to which the modified instruction led to improved learning.

Bernold et al. [27] describe an experiment at North Carolina State University in which one group of students was subjected to teaching around the cycle (in their term, "holistic instruction"), another was taught traditionally, and the course grades earned by the two groups were compared. Although the results were not conclusive, they appeared to indicate that Types 1 and 4 students were more likely to get low grades than the more numerous Types 2 and 3 students when teaching was traditional, and that holistic instruction may have helped a more diverse group of students to succeed. Spurlin et al. [29] report on an ongoing study comparing freshman engineering students of the four KoIb types. Their preliminary results also show Types 2 and 3 students doing better academically, and they are conducting further studies intended to pinpoint reasons for the relatively poor performance and high risk of attrition of the Types 1 and 4 students.

Julie Sharp of Vanderbilt University has used the KoIb model in several ways as the basis for instructional design. Her work includes the development of a variety of "writing to learn" assignments that should be effective for each of the four KoIb types [30] and applications of the model to instruction in communications and teamwork [26,31].

C. The Felder-Silverman Model

1) Model categories: According to a model developed by Felder and Silverman [13, 32], a student's learning style may be defined by the answers to four questions:

1. What type of information does the student preferentially perceive: sensory (sights, sounds, physical sensations) or intuitive (memories, thoughts, insights)? Sensing learners tend to be concrete, practical, methodical, and oriented toward facts and hands-on procedures. Intuitive learners are more comfortable with abstractions (theories, mathematical models) and are more likely to be rapid and innovative problem solvers [47]. This scale is identical to the sensing-intuitive scale of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.