Learning Styles - Chem 101/102

Relationships between Learning Styles
and Classroom Work

For my first in-class quiz, I ask them to take a free version of the Myers-Briggs test, called the Jung Topology Test. This is found HERE.. Every student if they chose takes the quiz, emails me their 4 letters describing their personality, and tells what they thought of the exercise. This serves several purposes: They learn something about themselves, become less frightened about this class, and learn that when they email me, I always email back. I gather the data, which I've been doing for several years, which reminds me of how diverse my students are in their learning styles, which keeps me on my toes for including different teaching styles in my class. This information is shared with my students every semester. I am an INTJ and this helps them understand where I am coming from as well.

Chem 101 SPRING 2005
LEARNING STYLES ACCORDING TO JUNG TOPOLOGY FOR MY CLASS

Normal Pop.:        NT = 13% SP = 38%   NF = 13%    SJ = 38%
My Class (S04): NT = 18% SP = 6%     NF = 22%    SJ = 54%
My Class (S05): NT = 18% SP = 12%   NF = 26%    SJ = 44%

SP   12% (28)   value physical involvement and activity in the learning process, the free-spirited, resourceful person wants entertainment in the process, thrive on verbal and visual approaches, like immediate, short and spontaneous approaches, not usually good team members, may be restless in regular class setting
NT   18% (42)   are interested in principles and logic, enjoy developing own ideas, technology appeals to you, need constant success experiences, exert constantly escalating standards on self and others, do not enjoy meaningless assignments
NF   26% (60)   need acceptance, caring and support, enjoy group activities and interactions, prefer cooperation over competition, focus more on people than the abstract, learn best in face-to-face dialogue
SJ      44% (102)   value responsibility, dependability, conformity, prefer structure in the classroom, like and need organization, need a schedule, want a disciplined authority figure, like materials to be laid out clearly, like factual information, expect teacher to "rule and teach" and expect the students to "follow and learn," want preservation of traditions

grade-work.gif - 8170 Bytes Here is the direct relationship between the percentage of work done by students that earned a specific grade. It is easily seen that the more work done by a student, the more likely it is that he or she will earn a better grade. I also included a % attendence score based on the specific quizzes taken in the classroom. There is a direct correlation between a student's grade and class attendence.

Here are the r² values between the GPR values and % work done by the students for all the assignments: Calibrated Peer Review writing assignments (CPR), ChemSkillBuilder computerized homework (CSB), and Bonus Opportunity Problems from the textbook (BOPs). The correlation values are at or above 0.90. The highest correlation, 0.99, was found for the homework that required the most tenacity - CSB.

However, more interesting questions are:

How does a student's learning style affect his/her grade in my class?
Does a student do better on certain kinds of classroom work because of his/her learning style?

Here are my results:

style-grade.gif - 8265 Bytes From this bar graph, the SJ and NT students did a little better in the course than the SP and NF students.
work-style.gif - 8125 Bytes For all types of assignments, the SJ and the NT students do a little better overall. SJ students are very dependable and responsible. It is expected that they would do their assignments. The NT students are also excellent students, interested in principles and logic, however, if they think an assignment is "busy work," they won't put out the effort. I worry more about the SP students who need more activity and entertainment in the classroom and the NF students who need more hand-holding and personal interaction.

cpr-grade.gif - 7771 Bytes On the CPR writing assignments, the NF and the SP students do equally well at all grade levels.

csb-grade.gif - 7509 Bytes On the tedious but well-worth-it ChemSkillbuilder assignments, the SP "A" students performed well. The unusually high value for the NT "D" student was because there was only one and the student worked diligently.

bop-grade.gif - 7668 Bytes All students did well on the Bonus Opportunity Problems (BOPs) with the NF and SP "A" students definitely seeing the benefit of doing this homework. It looked as if the NT students thought they were busy work and didn't do as well as the other groups. These problems were assigned from the even-numbered problems for which there was a Solution Manual with the complete solutions. It is probable that the NT students found these a little dull, even though they knew that they would appear in some form on the exams.

lab-grade.gif - 7605 Bytes The lab grades did not look to be dependent on learning styles. There were only two SP "D" students, causing the small spike in the curve.

attendence-grade.gif - 7727 Bytes There were 11 quizzes out of the total of 15 which required the students to be in the classroom. I used these as a measure of attendence. One of the interesting points was that the SP students (A, B and C), who need verbal and visual approaches to learning, were very good at coming to class.