Learning Styles of Information System Students: Input for Content Development in Adaptive eLearning Systems

Abstract

The ways an individual acquires, retains and retrieves information are termed as the individual‟s learning styles. While students have individual learning styles (active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal, sequential/global), mismatches often occur between the learning styles of students and the teaching style of instructors with unfortunate effects on the quality of the students‟ learning. One way to bridge this gap is to consider learning styles in the design of content for the presentation of individualized content.This paper presents an aspect of an ongoing eLearning research at the School of Information Sciences in Addis Ababa University. It aimed to address the incorporation of content for eLearning systems based on learning styles. In particular, it reports the findings of a survey conducted to determine learning styles of students using the Index of Learning Style (ILS) Questionnaire. Findings indicated that most of the students have active, intuitive, verbal and sequential learning styles. The paper also provides a high-level outline of how the findings of the survey are to be used in subsequent content development activities to address learning styles of Information System students.