Learning Styles and Distance Learning

Learning Styles and Distance Learning

Tailoring Learning Styles and Distance Learning for Results

Distance learning enabled by the Internet has the potential to significant increase the learning effectiveness of teaching strategies long-term. The tailoring of teaching strategies to the specific needs of students, often called scaffolding (Najjar, 2008) is inherently more attainable in the context of one-on-one learning sessions online. Studies also indicate that the combining of in-class teaching sessions that are more focused on interactive, not purely pedantic or "drill and kill" lecture sections, when combined with interactive and scaffold-based online instruction, significantly increase learning effectiveness (Zhao, Alexander, Perreault, Waldman, Truell, 2009). The intent of this paper is to evaluate how learning styles can be augmented and strengthened through the use of distance learning concepts, frameworks and foundational elements.

Tailoring Learning Styles and Distance Learning for Results

The philosophical shift from pedagogy being centered on the performance objectives of the recitation of facts, figures and dates to one of teaching students how to think critically, analyze thoroughly, and through their unique perspective and learning styles, internalize the knowledge within their own frameworks is happening today (Wilhelm, Sherrod, Walters, 2008). This philosophical shift away from pure pedagogy or "drill and kill" where students whose memorization skills can earn them superior grades has been found to completely miss the point of long-term learning. Instead what studies of the last ten years indicate is that when in-class interactive discussion of more abstract, intricate and often highly integrated concepts in a course are also supplemented with online and distance learning, greater levels of long-term learning are attained (Yang, Yu, Chen, Tsai, et al., 2005). Conversely when only highly pedagogical or "drill and kill" methods are used, students actually begin to re-define their own internal learning frameworks and structures to allow for quick memorization and recitation of facts. Even the highest performing students when ranked by cumulative Grade Point Average (GPA) could recount less than 40% of the content of classes taught purely through pedagogical approaches that focused on lecture and memorization techniques (Wilhelm, Sherrod, Walters, 2008).

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Scaffolding as a Strategy in Distance Learning

The tailoring of specific learning plans to the unique needs of students can be done both online and offline and methodologies of studies in this area typically use the latter as the control group in the analysis (Halttunen, 2003). What studies suggest is that often in-class teaching materials however do not lend themselves to precise scaffolding strategies to the extent the Internet, with Web-based applications and the ability to base individualized learning strategies on an enterprise-wide knowledge management system can (Yang, Yu, Chen, Tsai, et al., 2005). Further, the ontologies and collections of knowledge that are highly relevant to one specific group of students in an in-class setting is often static for the extent of a semester, as instructors often plan their courseware a full semester in advance (Savignon, 2008). This inevitably leads to less flexibility and customization on the part of learning strategies in class alone, and it often takes either the exceptionally gifted student who requires a greater challenge or the exceptionally challenged one who needs personalized learning strategies and scaffolding to force the issue of courseware additions or modifications. Typically this is avoided as instructors strive to keep an entire class together, within the boundaries of total class performance to ensure the minimum teaching objectives are attained (Savignon, 2008).

Distance learning however changes this dynamic and leads to much greater agility and responsiveness in terms of tailoring, fine-tuning and customizing individualized learning plans through scaffolding strategies (Najjar, 2008). The three most critical components of long-term learning and retention of concepts are autonomy, mastery and purpose (Cashman, 1997). These three critical principles are also evident in exceptional leadership strategies that change organizations, shifting them from being transactional to transformational in scope. The challenge for instructors then is to use distance learning not as a crutch for concepts that students are not understanding in class, but to tailor the students' entire learning experience, across both in-class and online learning objectives, within an electronically delivered scaffolding strategy (Yang, Yu, Chen, Tsai, et al., 2005).

Given how individualized instruction and scaffolding can be used to augment and strengthen overall learning there is a tendency on the part of researchers to limit their most abstract and difficult concepts entirely online as a result. Conversely there are the instructors who see in-class sessions as essential for the teaching of the most abstract, complex concepts. Bridging these two polarizing perspectives on how to successfully teach the most challenging material in a course is the need for defining scaffolding performance objectives by student to measure the effectiveness of distance learning personalized instruction (Halttunen, 2003). The intermediating of these two extremes shows that for the most complex concepts in a statistics course were more effectively taught through scaffolding as distance learning tools allowed the students to continually review concepts they were not familiar with. Scaffolding allowed for students to actively learn, fulfilling their need for autonomy in the learning process, in addition to giving them mastery over the presentation of concepts online as well (Kartha, 2006). Combining autonomy, mastery and purpose (Wilhelm, Sherrod, Walters, 2008) significantly increased long-term retention of statistical concepts as a result (Kartha, 2006).

Student Satisfaction, Attitudes and Purpose in Distance Education