Computer Aided Design: Learning Style Preference Effect on

In the Computer Aided Design (CAD) course at the United States Military Academy (West Point, NY), students learn two different design software packages, SolidWorks and MATLAB. In the past, faculty members who are responsible for teaching the course have observed a difference in performance by the students in course homework assignments and examinations between the two applications. In general, students performed higher on SolidWorks assignments. This poses the question: Does learning style preference affect the ability to learn different computer aided design tools? One hundred and eleven students enrolled in either the Spring 2012 (n = 61) or Fall 2013 (n = 50) semesters of Computer-Aided Design were asked to participate in this Institutional Review Board exempted study. Each student was asked to take Felder's and Soloman's “Index of Learning Styles” questionnaire. Of the four learning dimensions that are evaluated in the questionnaire, only the scores for two, Visual versus Verbal and Sequential versus Global, were examined in this study. These two dimensions seem to be most relevant to the research question. We expected that SolidWorks was more suited to learners who tend to be more visually and globally-oriented. Conversely, we expected MATLAB to be more suited for more verbally and sequentially-oriented students. This paper discusses the results of our study. The raw data in the Visual/Verbal domain appear to support our hypothesis to suggest that verbal learners perform better in MATLAB programming than in SolidWorks modeling, whereas visual learners have a less distinct difference in performance. A survey of students also indicates that a higher percentage of verbal learners prefer MATLAB compared to their visual counterparts. Introduction Theoretically, there are several different learning styles that can be observed in students. One way to assess these learning styles is to use the “Index of Learning Styles” designed by Richard Felder and Barbara Soloman. The questionnaire assesses the students’ learning styles based on four dimensions of learning: Active vs Reflective, Sensing vs Intuitive, Visual vs Verbal, and Sequential vs Global. This study focused only on the Visual vs Verbal and Sequential vs Global dimensions of the questionnaire. The purpose of this research is to determine the learning styles of the students enrolled in Computer Aided Design, as taught in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the United States Military Academy (West Point, NY) to determine whether different portions of the course are more targeted toward certain types of learners. The first portion of the course teaches a computer program that is typically used for mechanical design and simulation, while the second portion teaches a script-based computational program. We hypothesized that the first program was better suited for learners who tended to be more visually and globally-oriented. Conversely, we expected the second program to be better suited for learners who tended to be more verbally and sequentially-oriented. Further, an assessment of the correlation between the two learning dimensions was conducted to determine whether they P ge 23318.2 independently describe distinct learning styles, or whether they are related. We expected that they would be independent measures.