Faculty of Education - Theses

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Learning styles and success in first year engineering

Longley, Cherida ( 2000)

This paper explores some of the problems facing engineering education in Australia today. It postulates that a solution to the decline in academic quality and increasing diversity of students entering Bachelor of Engineering programs may be found in the application of learning theory and changes to the learning environment designed to more adequately accommodate student learning preferences. A survey of first year engineering students at Monash University (Victoria) suggests that there may be a mismatch in several dimensions between student learning preferences and the predominant teaching style. A subsequent pilot study using the 4MAT Learning Type Measure to obtain more detailed student learning profiles, suggests that amongst students with similar tertiary entrance scores, those with mismatched learning preferences may be at greater risk of poor academic performance.