Learning Style and Performance

Abstract

Most faculty members, particularly those involved in innovative teaching methods, have probably experienced the wide variety of student responses that occurs to a particular teaching approach. Some students may respond with high motivation to a game situation, for example, but react very negatively to a lecture format. Faculty utilizing different teaching approaches may also have encountered the student who dislikes working in group situations, preferring the anonymity or the individual independence of the lecture hail, and who in fact does well in this environment. The variety of possible responses is immense, which suggests that people have different learning styles, which in turn implies that their learning performance will vary with different learning environments.