THE FEASIBILITY OF DELIVERING A LEARNING-STYLE INVENTORY VIA A COMPUTER-BASED DELIVERY SYSTEM.

Matching teaching style to learning style has been proven to be beneficial in (1) increasing academic achievement, (2) improving students' attitudes toward school, and (3) reducing discipline problems. Thus, over the years, learning-style inventories have been developed to ascertain a student's learning styles. However, traditional paper-and-pencil inventories can be time consuming and sometimes provide inaccurate reports. Therefore, this study, descriptive in nature, was designed to examine the feasibility of delivering a learning-style inventory via computer. The questions posed were: (1) Is the computer-based delivery system easier to use than the paper-and-pencil method? (2) Does the computer-based delivery system reduce the amount of mathematical errors made by the instructor or student in scoring the inventory as compared to the paper-and-pencil method? (3) Does the computer-based delivery system reduce the amount of time needed to take the inventory and compile the results as compared to the paper-and-pencil method? (4) Does the computer-based delivery system reduce the amount of paperwork required of the instructor as compared to the paper-and-pencil method? (5) Do the instructor and student find the information compiled by the computer-based delivery system useful? To conduct the study, a sample of 295 students and six teachers from a southwestern high school was selected. One-half of the students received a paper-and-pencil version of the inventory and the second half received a computer-based version. After completing the inventory, each student was asked to complete a short questionnaire. The six instructors were then asked to complete several tasks involving retrieval and manipulation of information about the students. When finished, the instructors also completed a questionnaire. Data was collected on the students' and instructors' perceptions of the inventory, time to complete the inventory, and error rate in completing the inventory. From this data, it was concluded that there was no significant difference in the students' preferences between the two methods. However, a significant advantage became evident for the computer-based version when the completion times, error rates and instructors' perceptions were examined