A Learning Style Perspective to Investigate Students' Perceptions in Choosing the Most-Beneficial Educational Systems

Abstract

In recent years, researchers have been engaged in the development of adaptive learning systems that provide the best way for helping individual students improve their learning performance. Among various personal data in student profiles, learning styles have been considered as being one of the factors that need to be taken into account in developing adaptive learning systems. Several studies have shown that, by taking learning styles into account, learning systems can benefit students more owing to the provision of personalized learning procedures or contents that match the cognitive processes of individuals. However, few studies have been conducted on investigating if students have the ability to choose the most-fit e-learning systems for themselves in terms of the learning style perspective; moreover, it is interesting to investigate the factors that affect students in choosing e-learning systems. In this paper, we aim to investigate these issues by using two versions of an educational gamed developed based on the sequential/global dimension of the learning style proposed by Felder and Silverman. A total of 288 students participated in the study. The experimental results showed that, the choices made by the students were not related to their cognitive process or learning styles; instead, most students chose e-learning systems by intuitions based on personal preferences. Such findings not only imply that students might not have the ability to choose the most-beneficial educational systems on their own, but also reveal the importance and necessity of providing scaffoldings and developing adaptive learning systems for guiding the students to learn in a more effective way