INSIGHTS INTO LEARNING STYLES PREFERENCE OF ENGINEERING UNDERGRADUATES: IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING

Background and Purpose: Education at higher institutions prepares graduates for the real world. To develop and maintain quality, the focus must not only be on what institutions can offer but also on the learning needs and styles of learners. Despite many studies on engineering learners’ learning styles, limited research has been conducted to compare the learning styles of Engineering and Engineering Education learners. This study was conducted to ascertain the learning style preferences of first-year undergraduates from both groups in a science and technology-driven university in Malaysia. Methodology: This descriptive study consisted of 40 Engineering and 40 Engineering Education learners who attended an English language course at the university. Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire was adopted as the survey instrument. The data were analysed using self-scoring sheet and Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Findings: While both groups chose Kinaesthetic as a major learning style preference, the Engineering Education learners also chose Group, Tactile, and Auditory learning styles as their other major preferences. Both groups chose Visual and Individual as their minor preferences. Contributions: The findings extend research demonstrating the significant role of specific disciplines in Engineering to determine the learning style preferences of learners. The findings also provide useful insights that suggest implications for practice and policy. Keywords: Engineering, engineering education, English language, learning styles, teaching and learning. Cite as: Ismail, N. N. A., Abdullah, T., & Abdul Raof, A. H. (2022). Insights into learning styles preference of engineering undergraduates: Implications for teaching and learning. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 7(1) 390-409. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol7iss1pp390-409

Learning Styles of Saudi ESP Students

Explorations in learning styles have proved the significance of the ways students approach, assimilate, and process information. Students’ perceptions and their organization influence the quality of language learning and guide them towards autonomy, too. This study attempts to identify the preferred perceptual learning styles of 86 Saudi English for Specific Purposes (ESP) female students in the Preparatory Year Deanship, Prince Sattam bin Abdul Aziz University, Saudi Arabia. To accomplish this aim, a Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire (PLSPQ) developed by Joy Reid (1987) was used. The results showed that the participants’ major learning styles were Kinesthetic, Group, Auditory, Visual, and Tactile, whereas their minor style was Individual. The analysis of the data also revealed that the most preferred learning style was the Kinesthetic learning style (18.64%, M=4.42), and the least preferred one was the Individual learning style (14.30%, M=3.39). The second to fifth place belonged to Group (17.19%, M=4.07), Auditory (16.81%, M=3.98), Visual (16.55%, M=3.92) and Tactile (16.52%, M=3.91) learning styles. The findings have implications for teachers, syllabus designers, and researchers to take into consideration students’ preferred learning styles for language learning while teaching, changes in the learning environment, and material adaptation.

Crossword Puzzle as a Learning Tool to Enhance Learning about Anticoagulant Therapeutics

BackgroundEducational games make the learning process more enjoyable, fun, and create a competitive classroom environment that can positively affect learning. This study sought to implement and evaluate pharmacy students’ perceptions towards using crossword puzzles (CWPs) as a learning tool in the pharmacotherapy cardiovascular module focusing on the therapeutics of anticoagulants.MethodsClues for the puzzle were developed, validated, and piloted by course faculty. A free internet puzzle generator was used to create puzzles with 10 to 20 clues. Students were given 30 minutes to solve the puzzle following the completion of the didactic topic. An 8-item survey instrument and Pharmacists’ Inventory of Learning Styles (PILS) questionnaire were administered to examine students’ perceptions of the game and their learning style preference, respectively.ResultsOver three consecutive course offerings, 267 students participated in the activity from both undergraduate programs (Bachelor of Pharmacy (BPharm) and Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD). Most students expressed favorable perceptions of the puzzle. Female and BPharm students had significantly more favorable perceptions than male students and PharmD students on several perception items. There was no association between student perceptions and their learning styles.ConclusionCWP presented an innovative, creative, and easy active learning tool to enhance students’ learning and engagement.

Native-like Performance of Pragmatic Features: Speech Acts in Spanish

This study had as its goal to investigate how nonnative speakers (NNSs) of Spanish were able to perform pragmatics which in various ways resembled that of native speakers (NSs). The study focused on three advanced NNSs of Spanish who had contributed data six years earlier to a corpus of NS and NNS speech acts of complimenting, apologizing and refusing. The purpose was to do a contrastive analysis comparing the pragmatic performance of NNSs and NSs in order to capture both similarities and areas where highly competent NNSs displayed knowledge gaps, however subtle. The subjects responded to a language background questionnaire regarding their learning of Spanish and also completed a learning style preference survey. They were then asked to revisit their earlier performance in pragmatics from the corpus data and to describe the strategies that they used to produce their highly-rated performance in Spanish pragmatics at that time. The findings revealed ways in which the three subjects differentially imitated NS behavior, and provided insights as to how they arrived at native-like behavior in their facial expressions, use of clicks, physical contact practices, colloquial language, and cursing. The subjects’ reported learning style preferences appeared to be generally consistent with the strategies that they reported using for dealing with the pragmatic features of interest, such as the way that they dealt with cursing.

A STUDY OF ESP STUDENTS LEARNING STYLE AT DAYANU IKHSANUDDIN UNIVERSITY

The title of this research is A study of ESP Students Learning Style at Dayanu Ikhsanuddin University. The objective of the research is find out the ESP student learning style to be informed to the lecturers in order to used the match teaching style with the students’ learning style, and also informed to the students about their learning style.This research applied descriptive method and percentage analysis to classify ESP students learning styles at Dayanu Ikhsanuddin University in academic year 2018/2019. The sample of this Research was 53 students that taken randomly from the population. The instrument of this Research was questionnaire. In analyzing the students’ responses, the writer implemented the Likers Scale and the descriptive statistics was analyzed by using SPSS 21. The result of the research showed that most of ESP Students’ Learning Style at Dayanu Ikhsanuddin University were major in field Dependence and Reflective learning style preference and only a few students applied Independence, Analytic, global, and Impulsive.

The relationship between entrepreneurial experience and preferred learning styles

PurposeEntrepreneurship is a process of learning. The entrepreneurial learning process incorporates a cumulative series of multifaceted entrepreneurial experiences, which generally involve the development of new insights and behaviours. This study aimed to determine whether entrepreneurial experience has an influence on the preferred learning styles of students. The study also investigated the appropriateness of the Reduced Kolb Learning Style Inventory as a measuring instrument.Design/methodology/approachThe study was conducted on 586 male and 690 female students from South Africa (n = 1042) and Norway (n = 244). The Reduced Kolb Learning Style Inventory, making use of principal correspondence analysis, was used to determine the preferred learning styles, while the students' level of entrepreneurial experience was captured by items addressing prior entrepreneurial experience.FindingsThe analysis revealed a simpler measure of students' preferred learning styles, comprising a total of 12 items with three items per learning style. The study revealed that the preferred learning style was more important for students who had entrepreneurial experience than for those with less entrepreneurial experience. If students with entrepreneurial experience have stronger concerns for how they learn, it contributes to the understanding of the content of entrepreneurial learning.Originality/valueA modified Reduced Kolb Learning Style Inventory resulted in a concise instrument measuring students' preferred learning style in adherence to Kolb's work and evidenced its usefulness. This study contributes to a field that has been under-researched, related to the association between students' past and current entrepreneurial experience and their learning style preference, and aims to bridge the two research fields. This research explores these links and points to how these insights could inform entrepreneurship education.

THE CORRELATION BETWEEN STUDENTS’ LEARNING STYLE PREFERENCE AND LISTENING ACHIEVEMENT OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT STUDENTS

This research focused on the correlation between students’ learning styles and their listening achievement. The design was quantitative research. The research conducted in Halu Oleo University, English Department at academic year 2018/2019 that had passed Listening II to see their learning style and listening achievement. There were 76 students taken as samples. The data of the research were collected through a close-ended questionnaire adapted from Reid’s (1986) consisted of 30 statements and who had developed the perceptual learning style preference questionnaire to get the data of students’ learning style especially in listening II. To analyze the data, the researcher used descriptive statistics to find out the students’ listening achievement and their learning style based on the five categories; very good, good, moderate, low and failed. The researcher used the SPSS 16 program as the statistical program to analyze the data. The finding of the research showed that students’ listening achievement was mostly categorized as a good category and students were minor learning styles. Based on the discussion findings of this study that covered the score of students’ listening achievement and their learning style, the descriptive and inferential statistic analysis by using SPSS 16 program the researcher concluded that: Firstly, students the most preferred learning styles were Auditory Learning Style and Kinesthetic Learning Style. Secondly, based on the result above there were 2 learning style that correlate with listening achievement there were kinesthetic learning style showed that the coefficient correlate was -.317 and sig (2-tailed) was 0.038 ≤ 0.05 and group learning style showed that the coefficient correlates was -.0.366 and sig (2-tailed) was 0.01 ≤ 0.05. Also, the result of the correlation between students’ learning style and students' listening score showed that the coefficient correlation was -.349 and sig (2-tailed) was .022 it means that sig (2-tailed) ≤ 0.05 it means H1 was accepted so there was signifi couldt correlation. Meanwhile, coefficient correlates was negative correlate because the coefficient correlation was -.349. In addition, the researcher could conclude that there was a negative signifi couldt correlation between students’ learning style and their listening achievement of English Department Students at Halu Oleo University.