Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 50, Issue 4, May 2008, Pages 1451-1461
Computers & Education

Investigating the relationships among instructional strategies and learning styles in online environments

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2007.01.004Get rights and content

Abstract

This exploratory study tests the assertion that instructional strategies that match field-dependence status of students are most effective. The study conducted with 12 graduate students registered in a graduate level online course. An online version of the Psychological Differentiation Inventory was used to measure the field-dependence status of students. Students’ perceived learning outcomes, their effort and involvement, and level of interaction that they perceived in online course module were measured through an online questionnaire. Results suggested that matches between students’ learning styles and instructional strategies did not affect learner perception of their own learning outcomes, level of effort and involvement, and level of interactions in the course. Data also indicated that no single instructional strategy, among three instructional strategies tested, emerged as superior for high and low field-dependent online students.

Introduction

The Internet has taken center stage as a preferred medium for the delivery of distance education. Many universities offer online courses that respond to the diverse distance and time needs of today’s learners. Online course instructors are often provided with tools that help them develop courses that integrate multiple types of instructional strategies that facilitate learning and can appeal to learner preferences. Such instructional strategies provide resources and activities that present content, prompt active exploration with content, allow learners time to reflect on content and feedback before participating, interactively engage learners with their peers, and offer instructional modules designed to appeal to a variety of learning styles and preferences (Hamilton-Pennell, 2002). Learning styles are useful indicators of potential learning success because they provide information about individual differences in learning preferences from learning and information-processing standpoints (Smith & Ragan, 1999). Thus, learning style can suggest how instruction can be best designed to support learning preferences. Mitchell (2000) suggested that achievement scores of students whose learning styles match the types of instruction in online courses were higher than those students whose learning styles did not match. Mitchell (2000) concluded that learning style may be an important indicator of how effective different instructional strategies can be to different types of learners enrolled in online courses. However, Macneil (1980) found that learning did not increase when students categorized as field-dependent and field independent received instruction oriented to their style, suggesting that in classroom instruction learning style is not an indicator of the effectiveness of instructional strategies. Findings of these studies are contradictive and might be affected from the student populations studied since age difference exists between student populations used in Mitchell and Macneil’s studies. These contradictory findings, although conducted in different types of instructional environments, suggest that more research is required to better understand the relationship between learning styles and instructional strategies.

Learning is a cognitive process of taking in information, processing, organizing, and storing it in rich connected schema in ways that knowledge formed is easily recalled when required (Ormrod, 1999). Learning style is the combination of the learners’ motivation, and information-processing habits while engaged in the learning process (Aragon, Johnson, & Shaik, 2002). Each learner has preferences as to how s/he receives, processes, and recalls information during instruction. Many researchers have studied learner satisfaction of instruction however, few have controlled for students’ characteristics in their analyses of students’ satisfaction of online instruction (Thurmond, Wambach, & Connors, 2002).

One of the most widely used measures of learning style is field-dependent (FD)/field independent (FI) (Claxton & Murrell, 1987). Field dependence describes the degree to which a learner’s perception or comprehension of information is affected by the surrounding contextual field (Jonassen & Grabowski, 1993). Field-dependent individuals are more likely to succeed at learning tasks that engage them in:

  • Group oriented and collaborative work situations.

  • Situations where individuals have to follow standardized pattern of performance.

  • Tests requiring individuals to recall information in the form or structure that it was presented (Jonassen & Grabowski, 1993).

Highly field dependent individuals prefer to have information presented in clear and concise ways, storing and recalling it as presented. High field-dependent individuals tend to accept given information without reorganizing it. Low field-dependent individuals are more likely to excel at learning tasks that involve activities in which they must discover for themselves important aspects of content. They are likely to reorganize information based on their own learning preferences. Therefore, high field-dependent learners theoretically prefer or match to types of instructional strategies that will engage them with organized and presented information whereas low field-dependent learners tend to prefer or match better to instructional strategies that engage them actively in discovering key information and defining for themselves key facts, concepts, and rules.

Instructional strategies are the activities used to engage learners in the learning process. They represent a set of decision result in plans, methods, or series of activities aimed at obtaining a specific learning goal (Jonassen, Grabinger, & Harris, 1990). Many types of instructional strategies are used to engage learner in activities such as reading, listening, collecting, thinking, collaborating, and doing. An expository presentation instructional strategy suggests that effective learning requires providing content (facts, concepts, procedures, and principles) and performance activities (remembering, using, creating) using four primary presentation forms: rules, examples, recall, and practice. Instruction is more effective when it includes presentation of the appropriate knowledge form, opportunity for practice, and learner guidance. Thus, a complete lesson should consist of an objective followed by some combination of presenting rules and examples and providing practice and feedback appropriate to the learning task. Expository strategies in online environments generally include presenting online lectures with accompanying notes or specific readings followed by objective-based testing of content. Explanations are often kept simple and direct. Students usually use lecture or reading notes to complete learning activities or respond to posed questions.

Collaborative learning instructional strategies presume that learning situations are dynamic, systemic, and changing. Learning focus is adapted to a particular situation to generate dialog among diverse communities, improve understanding, integrate different forms of knowledge about a learning problem or situation, increase rapport, trust, and respect among participants, and result in tangible improvements to a given learning situation. Working together on instructional projects provides peers with different perspectives and opportunities to investigate subject matter at varying levels, justify and defend their ideas, and build deeper knowledge. Collaborative and group work instructional strategies in online learning require individuals, often at various levels, to work together to achieve a common goal. Individuals are prompted to analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and share their ideas collaboratively through virtual communication tools like email, discussion boards, or live chats.

Changing the combination and order of presentation forms accounts for the effectiveness of question-driven or inquisitive presentation and discovery learning instructional strategies. A discovery learning lesson consists of objectives followed by some combination of asking about rules and examples and providing practice and feedback, appropriate to the learning task. Such discovery learning instructional strategies require individuals to formulate investigative questions, obtain factual information, and build knowledge, which reflects their responses to posed situations or problems. Students develop their own questions, which guide their investigations to eventually discover facts, concepts, and rules of the learning content and develop responses to the posed situation. In online discovery learning based instruction students are often presented with instructional objectives from which they are given, or directed to identify, a list of resources with which they will interact and identify key information to achieve learning objectives. Through this process the learner acquires knowledge by discovering facts, concepts, and rules of the content.

Understanding the relationships among learning styles and instructional strategies holds great promise for enhancing learner perceptions of their own learning thus impacting educational practice (Claxton & Murrell, 1987). The primary purpose of this exploratory study was to test whether matching instructional strategies and learning style affect the achievement of students in online courses. Specifically, the level of the field-dependence and learning perceptions during expository, collaborative, and discovery instructional strategies use during an online course were studied.

This study tests Muir’s (2001) assertion that instructional strategies that match field dependence or independence learning styles are most effective. In theory high field-dependent individuals appear to prefer, or match with, expository (presentation) and collaborative (group work) types of instructional strategies. The characteristics of low field-dependent individuals suggest a match with discovery learning instructional strategies because these individuals prefer generating and testing their own hypothesis. Table 1 illustrates the suggested match and mismatch of learning style and instructional strategy tested in this study.

Abraham (1985) found that matching instructional styles to students’ field-dependent or independent style improved students’ performance in a course. In this study, researchers used two computer-assisted instruction lessons, one rule-oriented, and the other deemphasizing rules, to test whether a teaching approach that did not emphasize rules would be of greater benefit to field-dependent students in an English-as-second-language course. The results of the study demonstrated that field-independent students performed better with rule oriented approach (similar to expository instruction) whereas field-dependent students performed better with the approach deemphasizing rules (similar to discovery learning). Other research has contradicted these results. Macneil (1980) found that learning did not increase when students categorized as field dependent and field independent received instruction oriented to their style. In the study, researchers used discovery and expository approaches to test whether randomly assigned field-dependent students learned more from the discovery approach and field-independent students learned more from expository approach. Results of the study revealed that achievement of field dependent and field independent students did not vary as a function of style. The question remains: can match learning styles and instructional strategies in distance education better support student learning? This study was designed to address the following research questions:

  • 1.

    Is there a difference between the perceived learning outcomes of students whose learning style matches and mismatches with expository type of instructional strategy?

  • 2.

    Is there a difference between the perceived learning outcomes of students whose learning style matches and mismatches with collaborative type of instructional strategy?

  • 3.

    Is there a difference between the perceived learning outcomes of students whose learning style matches and mismatches with discovery type of instructional strategy?

  • 4.

    Is there a difference among the perceived learning outcomes of high field-dependent students for three types of instructional strategies?

  • 5.

    Is there a difference among the effort and involvement of high field-dependent students for three types of instructional strategies?

  • 6.

    Is there a difference among the perceived level of interaction of high field-dependent students for three types of instructional strategies?

  • 7.

    Is there a difference among the perceived learning outcomes of low field-dependent students for three types of instructional strategies?

  • 8.

    Is there a difference among the effort and involvement of low field-dependent students for three types of instructional strategies?

  • 9.

    Is there a difference among the perceived level of interaction of low field-dependent students for three types of instructional strategies?

Section snippets

Instructional context

This study was conducted at a private university located in the northeastern United States with graduate students enrolled in an online graduate course entitled Design and Management of Distance Education. This investigation focused on determining if online learners who were classified as low or high field dependent perceived their learning during engagement in different types of instructional strategies differently. Specifically, students were queried about their perceptions of learning

Data analysis

All data were ported into a statistical analysis package (SPSS 13) for later analysis. Mann–Whitney U-test for independent samples test and Kruskal–Wallis H-test were used to analyze the data. All statistical analyses reported in this research were conducted with a significant level of 0.05.

Learning style

The results of the online questionnaire version the Psychological Differentiation Inventory revealed that nine students were low field-dependent and three students were high field dependents. The mean score for students categorized as low field-dependent was 19.55 (SD = 3.53) while the mean score for students categorized as high field-dependent was 26.33 (SD = 0.57) (see Table 2).

Matching learning style with instructional strategy

The first hypothesis stated that there would be no significant difference between the perceived learning outcomes of

Discussion and conclusion

The statistical analysis from this study revealed no significant differences among three match situations for low and high field-dependent students. When the characteristics of low and high field-dependent students matched with instructional strategies, match groups did not show any statistically significant difference in their perceived learning outcomes. This result suggests that when low and high field-dependent students receive instruction utilizing instructional strategies matching their

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