Work in progress - learning styles and performance on the dynamics concept inventory

Recently, a great deal of attention has been paid to conceptual knowledge in engineering. Although professors can be quite good at teaching students how to choose the appropriate equation and calculate an answer, often these students do not come away from the course with a deep conceptual appreciation of the material. The current study investigates if certain types of learning styles correlate to student conceptual learning in undergraduate dynamics. Each of the students (86 last quarter) in the course took the index of learning styles (ILS) based on the Felder-Silverman model. The ILS assesses student preferences on four key dimensions: active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal, and sequential/global. Although some may argue on which learning styles model is the most appropriate, the ILS has been validated and reported often in the literature. Student scores on each of the four dimensions were recorded on the numerical score of 1-11. We have assessed student conceptual understanding by administering the dynamics concept inventory (DCI) before and after the course. The scores on the DCI were correlated to student learning styles.