Mixed Learning Styles: A Strategy for Team Formation

Abstract

The emphasis of this work is to analyse and assess a cohort of students' perspectives on team learning practices in activity-based learning approach. This activity was implemented in Linear Control Systems course. The motivation for this work is the authors' experience in teaching the course in previous iteration. It was observed that some teams performed exceedingly well, and a few others struggled to complete the activity. We believe that the reason for this was that the team formation was random. Team learning emphasizes interaction between students ‘through peer-to-peer learning, which strengthens the ability of a student to solve problems better. The authors felt there is an opportunity to explore the following research question: Does working in teams formed with mixed learning styles enhance student learning? In order to form teams, students underwent Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire by Richard M. Felder and Barbara A. Soloman. A common problem statement on modified Load-Frequency control model of an isolated power system area, to be operated with a controller was given student teams. Section-A comprised of 16 teams and Section-B had 13 teams, each team involving members with different learning styles. A pre-test and post-test were conducted to know the change in conceptual understanding. The post-test results indicate improvement in conceptual understanding. This is also validated by the ANOVA test with a 5% level of significance. From this study, it is observed that, strategic team formation is considered as a favourable approach for augmenting students' learning.