THE INFLUENCE OF STUDENT LEARNING EXPERIENCE LEVEL AND LEARNING STYLE ON ACHIEVEMENT

An emerging trend on university campuses has been to offer courses totally online, or with a blend of online and face-to-face components. In 2002, over 80% of public universities offered both blended and online courses to their on-campus students. It is reasonable to assume that students enrolled in an online class have a different learning experience and experience the course content differently than students enrolled in a face-to-face class, recognizing that different does not necessarily imply better or worse. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to determine if that difference in experience with the course content affects the amount of learning for students of differing learning styles. The sample used in this study consisted of undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory food science course. The control group consisted of students enrolled in a section of the course taught with a traditional lecture (N = 253). The experimental group consisted of students enrolled in a section of the course taught asynchronously using WebCT® and web pages (N = 247). Results indicated no differences for Concrete Sequential, Concrete Random, and Abstract Sequential learners. A significant, but impractical difference was found for Abstract Random learners, who achieved higher in the control group.