The Impact of Learning Styles and Instructional Methods on Students’ Recall and Retention in Programming Education

Abstract

Learning styles are the predetermined indicator which learners respond to and use stimuli in the context of learning. It is the preferred mode that learners perceive and process new information at a certain pace, which in turn affects their academic performance. This paper focuses on the visual-verbal learning styles as well as pair programming (PP) and direct instruction (DI) methods. A group of 83 first year computing students was involved in this experimental study. These students from two intact classes were randomly assigned either to the experimental group that received PP, or to the control group that received DI. During the seven-week treatment, the participants in PP group worked in pairs, and those of DI group worked individually to solve novel programming scenarios. Three computer programming performance tests (CPPT) – a pretest, an immediate posttest and a delayed posttest were conducted to evaluate the students’ recall and retention performance on programming comprehension. The post hoc test results revealed that both the visual and verbal students taught in the PP and DI groups performed equally good in recall performance. However, only the verbal students in the DI group significantly outperformed the visual students in retention. In conclusion, the diversity of learning styles influence students’ engagement in understanding the programming concepts; significantly affects information retention and later on their academic achievements.