PERSONALITY VARIABLES AND THE IMPROVEMENT OF COLLEGE TEACHING by

The position behind this study is that the college faculty member can improve his teaching, even if he is already a master teacher, by scientifically identifying some of the key variables that have a major impact on student learning in his classes. Two studies have attempted to answer the following question: Ts there any evidence Ail+ a college student's personality is related to his preference for various instructional experiences? Jungian personality types were used. The first study found that the students teeted hold predictable views for and against self-paced instruction: intuitive students preferred eelf-paced instruction to more tradieional group-paced teaching mothods; sensing types liked more traditional methods of instruction. The present study sought to find if associations made in the first study still held up and to lore mine what relationships, if any, existed between student types and each of *he self-paced course modules. The instrument of study was a five-credit, self-paced course of 54 students in thermodynamics. It consisted of 2 ^ self-paced instructional modules (packages). Three types of data-gathering instruments were employed: (a) a course evaluation form, (b) a module evaluation form, and (c) the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator which measures the differences in student personality and learning types. (Findings, conclusions, a summary, and recommendations are presented for this study.) (JA