Learning Styles of Mexican Food Science and Engineering Students

Abstract

People have different learning styles that are reflected in different academic strengths, weaknesses, skills, and interests. Given the almost unlimited variety of job descriptions within food science and engineering, it is safe to say that students with every possible learning style have the potential to succeed as food scientists and engineers. They may not be equally likely to succeed in school, however, since they respond differently to different instructional approaches and the predominant mode of instruction favors some learning styles over others. The goals of the study were to test the degree to which student performance and attitudes were consistent with expectations based on learning style theory and prior studies. The Index of Learning Styles© (ILS) was administered to several groups of undergraduate and graduate food science and engineering students taking different courses at the Universidad de las Américas, Puebla. Those courses were taught in a manner that emphasized active and cooperative learning as well as inductive presentation of course material. Visual, sensing, and active learning styles were displayed by the majority of students. Significant differences (P < 0.05) were observed between males and females for the Sensing/Intuiting and Sequential/ Global dimensions of the Felder‐Silverman model. Type differences in various academic performance measures and attitudes were noted as students progressed through the curriculum. Observations were generally consistent with predictions of type and learning style theories, and the instructional approach improved the performance of ILS types (actives and sensors) found in previous studies to be disadvantaged in the science and engineering curricula.

Teaching Styles, Learning Styles and the ESP Classroom

“…Palou found similar findings where the respondents had clear preferences for the visual learning styles. The findings of this study have shown that the students had balanced preferences for the other three learning styles dimensions [21].…”

“…However, the UTeM students generally had balanced preferences for the other three learning styles dimensions regardless of their field of study, gender or ethnic background. Similarly, studies on engineering students [21][22] and non-engineering students [24 , 26] proved that field of study, gender and ethnic background had minimal effect on the students' learning styles preferences.…”

“…This instrument was chosen for this study as it was designed with engineering students in mind and various studies have discussed its reliability and validity [11,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] . It was administered and the data analysed to identify students' learning styles preference according to their field of study, gender and ethnic backgrounds.…”

“…One reason is lecturers' teaching styles preferences and students' learning styles preferences do influence the teaching and learning process [16][17]. Studies have been conducted to identify the learning styles preferences of engineering students with regards to their fields of study [18][19][20], gender [21][22][23] and ethnic backgrounds [24][25][26]. Researchers have also looked at the teaching styles of language lecturers [27][28].…”

Enhancing Student Learning in Food Engineering Using Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulations

“…Although most of us are somewhat adept in a variety of learning styles, we generally demonstrate a strong preference for one type of learning. For example, a survey of Mexican food science and engineering students showed that the majority of students displayed visual, sensing, active, and sequential learning style (Palou 2006). However, typical engineering instructional approaches often use the spoken (verbal) or written word as the primary means of transmitting information.…”