Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of user’s learning style (including accommodators, divergers, convergers, and assimilators) on user’s satisfaction on the web-based learning system and their learning effectiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
This experimental research used the college students from a technology institute in Taiwan as the subject sources. By using the Kolb’s learning style model, the students are classified as four types of learners: convergers, divergers, assimilators, and accommodators. The authors analyzed the relationships among the different learning styles with their effectiveness of learning and satisfaction of using the web-based learning system. The mediation effect of gender is also presented.
Findings
This research indicates that: first, the satisfaction of the web-based learning system has significant influence on the learning performance of learners; second, different learning styles learners have no significant effect to the satisfaction on using the web-based learning system; third, learning effectiveness has significant difference among different learning style learners on the web-based learning system; the learning effectiveness of accommodators and divergers was significantly higher than the assimilators; fourth, different learning styles learners show significant difference in gender proportion. In addition to accommodators, whose proportion of women is higher than men, the other three learning styles’ proportions in men are higher than women.
Research limitations/implications
This study was grounded in the Kolb’s learning style theory. The authors provide implications for academic studies in e-learning research stream that aimed at understanding the role of learning style as well as gender differences in the asynchronous web-based learning system.
Practical implications
Results from this study provided the implications for students, educators, and e-learning system designers. The design of teaching materials as well as functions of e-learning systems should take learners’ learning style into consideration to ensure the best learning outcome.
Originality/value
This study examined the students’ learning style as well as gender differences in the asynchronous web-based learning system. An experiment was conducted to ensure the data were collected in a controlled environment, thus, offer the value that most of the prior study lacks.
New Ideas on the Design of the Web-Based Learning System Oriented to Problem Solving From the Perspective of Question Chain and Learning Community
