Work in Progress: Dominant Sensory Mode based Groups in VLSI Classes

We are working with the hypothesis that active learning is more productive when heterogeneous groups of VLSI hardware students, with different learning styles, interact with each other. The proposal explores instruments to judge the dominant sensory modes of hardware/VLSI engineering students, along with their affinity for logical modules and the underlying physics of semiconductor. Since VLSI course content involves learning from tool manuals, solving problems, and also listening to class lectures, we test for visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning mode. Preliminary result indicates that the heterogeneous groups based on dominant sensory mode yielded 19% better performance than random grouping. Future focus will be on (a) exploring different instruments, (b) evaluating their success in classifying the dominant learning mode and (c) investigating the role of women in the cooperative learning scenario