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STUDY SHOWS INTERNET CAN HELP TEACH VARIOUS LEARNING STYLES
The stereotypical engineer is a linear, analytical thinker, but recent research at the University of Missouri-Rolla shows that many engineering students prefer a less linear style of learning.
In a study conducted as part of his Ph.D. dissertation, Marcus A. Huggans of St. Louis, who is the first African American male to earn a Ph.D. from UMR, examined the learning styles of 32 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in an upper-level electrical engineering course, Fiber Integrated Optics. The course, offered this fall at UMR and at UMR's Engineering Education Center in St. Louis, was taught by Dr. Steve Watkins, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Huggans, who will receive his doctorate in engineering management from UMR on Dec. 19, created Internet-based learning modules for the class to use as study aids. The students were able to access the sites via the World Wide Web at their convenience.
Huggans and Watkins designed one set of learning modules for students who prefer to learn "sequentially" -- typically step-by-step, in a linear, deductive fashion. He created the other set for students who prefer to learn "globally" -- in a more inductive, intuitive and holistic manner.
Huggans based his research on a learning style inventory developed at North Carolina State University by Dr. Richard M. Felder and Barbara Soloman, which identifies five learning categories: understanding, input, processing, organization and procession. Huggans focused his research on the category of understanding, which includes the sequential and global learning styles.
The Web site designed for sequential learners included text and detailed information on electromagnetic, plane-wave and optical theory, and allowed users to move sequentially through step-by-step instructions, Huggans says. The site designed for global learners was menu-based and contained more images and options than the modules designed for sequential learners.
After testing students to determine their learning style -- exactly 16 were global learners and 16 were sequential -- Huggans directed the students at random to the two Web sites. The students were later quizzed on what they studied on-line, and Huggans found that those who used the Web site that catered to their learning style fared better than those who used the other Web site. Students using the preferred learning style scored an average of 9.6 on the 12-point quiz, while students who used the less-preferred learning style scored an average of 7.2.
"If you teach someone in their preferred learning style, they perform better on a test and in the classroom," says Huggans. "It also seems like the individuals took their exams with more confidence and a lot faster than before, as noted by the instructors."
Huggans also compared the exam percentage scores with those of exams taken in 1992, 1994 and 1996 - - the previous three times the course had been offered -- and found that the class that took part in this experiment scored as well or better as students in the past three semesters.
Huggans cautions that "nobody is global all the time and nobody is sequential all the time." People simply have preferences for learning, he says.
He was surprised, however, to discover that many students in the class had a preference for global learning. "Usually we think of engineering students as being very sequential, very analytical, but that was not the case," Huggans says. "Engineers are global learners as well."
The research shows that instructors should take students' learning preferences into account when developing course materials, he says. If creating Web-based learning materials, for example, instructors should take the two-pronged approach of creating separate sites for each preference.
"It forces the instructor to be more structured in the beginning, but in the long run it saves the instructor a lot of time," Huggans says.
While the Internet-based learning modules seemed to work well for a technical course, Huggans is not sure how well it would work in other disciplines. "We've shown that we have a model here that can be used in engineering, but can it be transferred to history or economics? I'm not sure."
Huggans, a 1991 graduate of Lutheran North High School in St. Louis, also holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and a master of science degree in engineering management from UMR. He conducted his research as a GEM Fellow through the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science Inc. The GEM consortium consists of more than 70 corporate sponsors and more than 80 universities.
Huggans' fellowship was sponsored by Texas Instruments Inc. Upon graduation he will join Texas Instruments' semiconductor technical sales and marketing group in Dallas. He worked as an intern for Texas Instruments in 1996.
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