Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Learning Style, Student Motivation, and Active Learning

Abstract

For the past two years, we have studied student and faculty satisfaction with educational technology we regularly use in the classroom: the Tablet PC and active-learning software, such as DyKnow and Classroom Presenter. These studies are based on user surveys over a large number of courses given at our comprehensive college, ranging from science and engineering to the humanities. We have previously reported that about half the students are relatively neutral about the technology, a quarter dislikes it, and a quarter are very pleased. After reviewing the results of various measures, we found that individual differences in learning styles and student motivation correlate with whether a student is satisfied or dissatisfied with active-learning software. We found that students who are intrinsically motivated to learn, who like technology in the classroom, who like delivered notes (or at least faculty-provided notes), and who are active learners are more apt to be satisfied with active-learning software.

1. Introduction

For the past two years, we have studied student and faculty satisfaction with educational technology we regularly use in the classroom: the Tablet PC and active-learning software, such as DyKnow and Classroom Presenter. These studies are based on user surveys over a large number of courses given at our comprehensive college, ranging from science and engineering to the humanities. Since our students receive a Tablet PC and software when they enter the college, they use the Tablet PC as their primary and—for the vast majority of both faculty and students— only computing platform. Thus, the survey population is knowledgeable about the operation of the Tablet PC and associated software, and the technology has become an integral part of their academic lives.

In a recent paper1, we reported that our latest results indicate about half the students are relatively neutral about the technology, a quarter dislike it, and a quarter are very pleased. After reviewing the results of various measures, we found that individual differences in learning styles, as measured by Felder’s Index of Learning Styles2 correlate with whether a student is satisfied or dissatisfied with programs like DyKnow or Classroom Presenter. We also suspected that a

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Birmingham, W., & DiStasi, V., & Welton, G. (2009, June), Learning Style, Student Motivation, And Active Learning Paper presented at 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--5706