The importance of learning styles in group design work

Effective communication between engineering design team members is essential. It depends on the successful transfer (sending, receiving and processing) of information. This information may range from data and facts to creative ideas. Recent work by R. Felder and L. Silverman (1988) has shown that individuals differ from one another in how they prefer to receive and process information. In this paper, we look at the relationship between individuals´ preference for receiving information and their methods of sending information. It was initially anticipated that each individual´s mode of presenting information would match his or her preferred mode of receiving information, and that this match would result in improved communication. To study the congruency (or incongruency) of how individuals prefer to receive information and how they go about sending information, an experiment was designed and conducted. The experiment consisted of four teams of engineering educators engaged in a design exercise. Their design activities were videotaped. Results based on analysis of the tapes and individual learning styles inventories showed that most participants preferred to receive information visually and engaged in drawing very little during the design exercise. If the definition was expanded to include using drawings, communicative gesturing (i.e. using hand gestures to describe a physical object or action), using hardware and referencing hardware, then visual communication went from comprising an average of 3.8% of the design time to an average of 21.1% of the design time