An Examination of the Relationship Between Intellectual Development and Learning Preferences in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Ongoing)

Engineering educators have used the evaluation of students’ learning preferences as a way to improve academic performance and the overall classroom experience. This paper discusses an ongoing study that examines the link between the learning preferences and the intellectual development of engineering students. It further seeks to examine to what extent do students with particular learning preferences undergo a higher degree of intellectual development through an engineering curriculum. Electrical and computer engineering students at a large Midwestern university completed inventories with respect to intellectual development (Learning Environment Preference) and learning styles (Index of Learning Styles) in order to establish their level of intellectual development and their learning style. Preliminary results show that specific learning styles achieve higher intellectual development assessment scores and the degree of preference for a learning style is a factor in the intellectual development as it relates to the assessment scores.