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What Problem is Being Addressed?

Although not directly related to any specific course, a student’s understanding of how he or she learns can be extremely beneficial. Overall, diversity in learning styles among team members can be a positive impact on effective team/collaborative activities. It provides a balance when learners work together, especially when assignment information is provided in varying formats. As an example, the visual and auditory learners may extract different information from the same video clip.

This positive impact also occurs when the team assignment requires varying deliverables. One student may do well at the writing, another in the developing a visual presentation, and still another in the statistical compilations or demonstrations. This is true for learners online and in-class.
To promote the diversity in teams, instructors should help learners identify their learning styles, and then ensure teams include individuals with differing styles or at least help students to understand the benefits of a current team’s mixture.

Objectives and Assessments
The webquest activity is designed to enable students to determine their personal learning styles using an already existing, free, online instrument. An individual reflection assignment of lessons learned is an important component. As a team, the students compile their information, determine the impact of learning styles on teams in either an academic or business situation, and present their findings. The accompanying rubric will be used to assess the students’ learning. The rubric is included within the webquest Evaluation page.

Design Integration Strategy

The Learning Styles Webquest is designed to be used across courses and disciplines so the instructions are purposely generic. The constructivist activity includes both individual and group components.

Materials Needed

An introduction of the activity should be provided as part of an in-class demonstration of the Webquest and the corresponding learning style instrument, which requires instructor access to a computer and projection equipment.

Students will need access to the tool via the Internet and can complete the initial component individually. Access to Microsoft Word or other word processing software is also required. For the team component, access to the following is needed: Microsoft PowerPoint or other presentation package (if they select the presentation option), a text editor or web editor (if the web page option is selected), and/or Microsoft Word or Publisher (if the newsletter option is selected).

The computer in the classroom and those in the computer lab must have Internet access. Although the computer lab is available outside of classroom hours for student access, the instructor should reserve the lab computers for one class period to help students begin the project. Instructions for copying and pasting the individual student results into Microsoft Word are included in the Webquest.

Submission Instructions

Ensure your students understand how to submit their learning styles result, reflection, and their project. The projects could also be presented in front of the class if a discussion board is not available.

Sources