The effects of learning styles on group development in an online learning environment

As a student, an educator, and, now, as an instructional designer, I have always been interested in how individuals relate to each other when they attempt to work together. It appeared to me that, more often, the road to a finished product was paved with conflict when individuals had to work together. But what was the cause of this conflict, I often wondered? Online learning’s exponential growth and my extended experiences in working with teams in this new learning environment added to my perplexity and encouraged me to systematically study this topic. The purpose of this thesis was to study learning styles as a factor influencing group development in an online learning environment. It specifically examined how an individual group member’s learning style influences his/her group development process during online learning as well as how an individual group member’s learning style contributes to the development of the group itself during online learning. The results of the literature review pointed to lack of a consensus on matching a learner’s learning style with an environment similar to his/her own preference for learning. The analysis of four groups’ interactions in an online class for a course of one semester suggested that learning style of the individual does not seem to affect the progression of the group given a sequential stage development model