Learning styles amongst engineering students in Malaysia, South Africa and Finland

Abstract

A critical awareness and understanding of student learning styles by both engineering students and educators is important as it could provide valuable insight into what is needed to create meaningful learning experiences, and more effective teaching. Learning styles are essential in understanding how students learn [1]. There is an inextricable link between teaching and learning. An acknowledgement that students learn in different ways and that they may not always find themselves in a learning environment that considers and incorporates this diversity into teaching, is important. Drop-out rates and poor throughput rates are consequences of ineffective teaching and learning. Mismatches between student learning styles and traditional teaching styles, as referred to by Felder and Silverman [2], are amongst several factors that contribute to ineffective teaching and learning. Student disengagement and boredom may also be attributed to such mismatches [2, 3]. Engineering students who lean towards an active learning style may be lost to the system if presented with the “old paradigm” pervasive in engineering courses where students are viewed as “passive recipients of knowledge transferred by master teachers” [4]. Given the uniqueness of individuals and the concomitant diversity and complexity of learning needs, it stands to reason that the provision of absolute matching of learning styles to teaching styles may be problematic. However, efforts should be made to understand how students learn in order to provide more effective learning experiences. Anson, et al. [4] see a solution to the mismatches between student learning styles and the teaching styles of their lecturers in the form of a symbiotic relationship between student and teacher “beliefs and practices” [4].