AN EXAMINATION OF STUDENT LEARNING STYLES AND LEARNING MODALITIES ON PROBLEM-SOLVING SUCCESS

The purpose of this study was to determine if differences in learning modalities and learning styles of students were related to scores on the Whimbey Analytical Skills Inventory (WASI). The WASI is a problem-solving exam that measures analytical reasoning ability. The research objectives were: (1) To determine the various types of learning styles that freshman college preparatory students possess as measured by the Learning Style Inventory (LSI) that is used by D. Kolb and B. McCarthy. (2) To determine the mode pattern in right/left-brain function that freshman college preparatory students possess as measured by the Human Information Processing Survey (HIP) that was designed by E. P. Torrance. (3) To measure the success levels of these students on the Whimbey Analytical Skills Inventory (WASI) that was developed by A. Whimbey and J. Lochhead. (4) To examine the relationship between groups of students with different learning styles and learning modalities and their success rates on the WASI. A total of 180 freshman college preparatory students were selected to make up the population for this study. The independent variables were the various subgroups of students as identified by the LSI and HIP instruments. The dependent variable in the study was the students\u27 score on the WASI. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, one-way analysis of variance, and a contingency analysis using the chi-square statistic and the Eta, Cramer\u27s V, and Lambda measures of association were used to examine the data for differences. Based on the findings of this study, it was concluded there was no relationship between learning styles or learning modalities and problem-solving success. What appears to be distinct differences in the ways students preferred to learn or process information had very little, if any, impact on their ability to analytically reason on the problem-solving exam used in this study