Adapting instruction in search of ‘a significant difference’

Abstract

The theory of learning styles states that people have different approaches to learning and studying [7,8]. Given a specific instruction method or environment, some people will learn more effectively than others due to their individual learning style and the grade distribution of the learning would be bell-shaped, with the majority of the learners appearing in the middle of the distribution curve. Several studies show that there is ‘No Significant Difference’ when technology is applied to instruction [6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 23, 25], since either in traditional classrooms or in any of the technological environments, there is only one form of instruction, and usually from one source, yielding the familiar bell shaped grade distribution. This explains the ‘No Significant Difference’ results and indicates that another instruction method needs to be investigated. An approach to achieve ‘A Significant Difference’ is to provide several different instruction methods. This paper describes Arthur, a Web-based instruction system that provides adaptive instruction to achieve ‘A Significant Difference’.