A survey of kmutt architecture students’ learning

A SURVEY OF KMUTT ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS’ LEARNING STYLE: AN IMPLICATION TO COURSE DEVELOPMENT AND CLASSROOM TEACHING

Wareesiri Singhasiri, Pornapit Darasawang, and

Wilaksana Srimavin

KMUTT Research and Development Journal, 2004, V2, April – June

Presented by Mr.Nattawut Matluang, [email protected]

THE AIM OF THE RESEARCH

•To find the learning styles of the first year Architecture students in order to see if the curriculum and materials provided cater for their learning styles.

INTRODUCTION

•According to the Thai National Education Act, it can be summarized that the curriculum should focus on the learners’ need.

•The department of Language, School of Liberal Arts, KMUTT has prepared Fundamental English Course LNG 101 for the first year KMUTT undergraduate students

•Architecture students are quite new and the department has not been quite successful in teaching them as the differences of their nature and styles of learning.

LITERATURE REVIEW•Learning styles are ‘internally based characteristics’, often not perceived or consciously use by learner, for intake and comprehension of new information.

•Learning styles can be regarded as; the Seven Multiple Intelligences, the perception, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBIT), and widely Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model.

•The learning style inventory constructed by Willing who interpreted Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model was adopted in this study.

•Learners learn best when the learning condition suits their learning preferences (Richard and Lockhart, 1994).

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

•What are the classroom activities and tasks they prefer?

•What are the learning styles of the Architecture students?

SUBJECTS AND RESEARCH INSTRUMENT

•The subject were 63 first year Architecture students

•The questionnaires adapted from Willing

•The questionnaire consists of 30 statements.

•Every statement represents learning styles.

•The statements were categorized into 6 groups

•The students have to tick on the rating scales

DATA ANALYSIS

•Counting the number of responses and finding the average mean of each statement

•Groping the statement into 6 categories to interpret activities or tasks.

•Finding out the learning styles by ranking technique.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

•The first part in Fig.2 focuses on the preferred activities to answer the first research question.

•The second part in Table1 reports the activities and the style types to answer the second research question.

CATEGORY 1: CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES.

•The first three activities obtained highest score.

CATEGORY 2: TEACHING BEHAVIOR

•The students preferred the teacher to …

CATEGORY 3: LANGUAGE STUDY

•It found that the student like to …

•They enjoy working in a group and interact with other people. The item 13, ranked 29 can support this.

CATEGORY 4: ASPECT OF LANGUAGE TO BE EMPHASIZED

•The highest score is …

•They are not interested in learning language in term of rule or a large chunk of vocabulary.

•The lowest score is …

CATEGORY 5: SENSORY MODALITY OPTION

•The mean scores of three activities were quite high. •All belong to concrete learning styles

CATEGORY 6: OUTSIDE CLASS ACTIVITIES

•The highest score is …

•The final scores are slightly above average. •They Enjoy learning language through the use of media

•The lowest score is …

THE RESULTS FROM FIG.2indicate types of activities that the student preferred to study.

•motivated in learning from hand-on, interactive, communicative activity in a small group

•preferred to have an opportunity to see either the form of picture or written texts

•are to some extend independent learners

•needed teachers to give a clear explanation

•neither like studying grammar nor vocabulary

They ……..

AS SHOWN IN TABLE 1, •the subjects’ preferences of learning activities, the 8 highest ranked activities are …

•It’s interesting that 6 from 8 activities represent concrete learning style, while other two are authority-oriented styles.

•Their dominant learning style is the concrete style. •They enjoy learning in class or group by doing activities and using

materials that they can see, listen and participate. •It shows that they like to learn by seeing and doing.

IMPLICATIONS

1. Task Characteristics and the materials

•Like learning by doing and through game; to do or practice by themselves with fun

•Like learning by seeing and listening to foreigner and also searching for materials or information by themselves; to concern from a variety of media/source or interviewing foreigners

•Not like working alone; to learn in pair or small group and exchange the idea

IMPLICATIONS

2. Roles of learners and teachers

•Teacher as consultant; need the teacher at the beginning but not all the time and learner as consultants, co-workers and interlocutors; work and exchange ideas and information with their friends but not prefer the home assignments

•Teacher as facilitator; work with them sometimes, help on problem, then summarize what they have learnt and encourage to conclude on their own to lead to independent learner.

IMPLICATIONS

3. Stretching students’ learning styles

•Providing them materials that cater for other sensory modes

•Encouraging them to analyze, discuss and help to monitor the language use

•Doing the activities in pair or group

CONCLUSION

•The learning style preference of Architecture students is concrete; they like to learn by doing

•The English course should design to cover tasks and materials, roles of teachers and learners and how to help them stretch their learning styles so they can deal with the tasks which are not catered their learning styles