Asian Journal of Research in Social Sciences and Humanities
Year : 2014, Volume : 4, Issue : 5
First page : ( 148) Last page : ( 161)
Online ISSN : 2249-7315.

Learning Styles and Academic Performance of Synchronous E-Learning Students

Shahabadi Mehdi Mehri, Research Scholar, Dr. Uplane Megha, Associate Professor

Department of Education and Extension, University of Pune, India

Online published on 7 May, 2014.

Abstract

Most of educators are aware of their learners’ different preferences in learning process. These ways of learning preference, characteristics or any other psychological parameters accepted as learning styles of students. A learning style as an important characteristic, should not review in learning process in single way while academic performance is a factor that enhanced whenever learning styles of students are considered. The aim of the research is to find out learning styles of students and ascertain the probable differences among different academic performance groups based on their learning styles in synchronous e-learning environment. The synchronous or asynchronous e-learner test is as a questionnaire for e-classes was developed by the researchers in order to distinguish synchronous from asynchronous e-learners in virtual Universities. The Kolb's Learning Styles Inventory (KLSI 3.1) was used to identify preferred learning styles among 388 synchronous e-learners that selected by multi-stage random sampling from six virtual Universities of Tehran. The Kruskal Wallis Test was used as the statistical tool while Mann-Whitney U test used as Post Hoc which should be conducted between each two groups in order to determine most causes of the difference among categories. The results indicated that there is significant difference in learning styles within different academic performance groups whether the results of Mann-Whitney U test indicated that observed differences are due to learning preference of low academic performance group that preferred Assimilating style with medium and high academic performance group that preferred Diverging style.

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Keywords

Learning styles, synchronous, learning preferences, e-learner, and academic performance.

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