Course evaluation for the purpose of development: What can learning styles contribute?

Abstract

The purpose was to investigate whether it would be useful for development purposes to include a survey of learning styles among student and teachers as part of the evaluation of a graduate course in statistics in a Public Health Programme, and to compare the learning styles of students and lecturers. A qualitative analysis was conducted to identify the implicit styles embedded in course descriptions. The D-SA-LSI based on Sternberg’s theory of mental self-government was used to measure learning styles. The 14 learning style scales has good psychometric properties, and measure qualitatively different styles. Results showed differences between the learning styles of teachers and students, and identified two areas for course development: the design of exercises with regard to the level of abstraction and concreteness; the incompatibility of the relatively complex ways of thinking embedded in course objectives and the students’ preferences for thinking at a cognitively simpler level while learning.