A Study of Students\u27 Learning Styles in ITV Broadcast, Remote, and Traditional Classrooms at East Tennessee State University.

The purpose of this study was to determine if the learning styles of students enrolled in ITV sections and students enrolled in a traditional section of the same course, all taught by the same instructor, had any influence on the academic performance of the students enrolled in those courses. A two-part survey was used to gather data for this study. The first part was designed by the researcher to gather demographic information about why each student selected the instructional form in which he or she was enrolled, as well as a student\u27s preferences for classroom format. The second part of the survey was made up entirely of Kolb\u27s Learning Style Inventory and was administered to determine the learning styles of the students in both the ITV and traditional classroom sections. Data were gathered from an undergraduate course taught by one instructor that had a section of the course in a broadcast classroom, remote classrooms, and traditional classroom. One hundred-thirty-eight surveys were distributed by the instructor to students in the various classroom settings. Returned were 86 usable surveys, resulting in a return rate of 62%. Inferential and descriptive statistical procedures were used for data analysis. The Kruskal-Wallis Test was used to test for difference among midterm scores for each class site and learning style. Chi-square tests were used to test for difference in learning styles between male and female students and varying age groups. Findings of this study indicate that there are no significant differences between the learning styles and academic performances of students in ITV distance education courses and traditional courses taught by the same instructor. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the demographic values of gender, class site, or age. The findings in this study can not conclude that while students in the remote classroom did score higher on mid-semester grades, those differences were not statistically significant and, therefore, may have occurred by chance. There are no statistically significant differences in these findings that would indicate that students in remote class sites academically achieve any better or worse than those in broadcast sites or traditional class sites