Work in Progress – Learning Styles and elearning, what is the Connection?

The purpose of this paper is to describe an experiment designed to explore the relationship between a student's learning style and their success in an online module. This paper will present these preliminary findings and describe how this information was then used to motivate the design of online module content using a variety of media to address the preferences of the auditory, kinesthetic and visual learner. A pre-test and post-test quasi experimental design is employed to establish the possible effectiveness of adapting to a learner's style. Each student prior to taking the online module is requested to complete a learning style questionnaire. Depending on their learning style each student will then be directed to a particular version of the module content designed to accommodate their preferred learning style. A pre-test post-test experiment will be used as one measure of their performance during the module. The students that will be involved in this experiment are those doing the Higher Diploma in Computing and those doing a Bachelor of Science in Computing. Their course will use a blended learning approach