A learning styles comparative study from high level students of face-to-face and distance education

Abstract

This paper compares the dominant learning styles in the high level students from face-to-face and distance education modalities. It understands the learning style as something proper to the individual, because it defines how the students elaborate the construction of knowledge in their cognitive structure. The students learning styles identification is relevant to the teachers because, as mediators, they can direct the strategies that best contribute to the process of teaching and learning. Considering the distance education expansion it is necessary to evaluate which learning styles are prevalent among students of this modality, by this reason the central issue of this investigation is in the scope of comparative education, seeking to observe the particular learning styles from students of these two modalities. This is a quantitative approach research that uses as a data source a field research, conducted in an intentional and non-probability sampling, composed of post graduating students from face-to-face and distance education and using the questionnaire developed by Felder and Silverman as a data instrument collection. The study concludes that in both groups of students there is a predominance of the active, sensitive, visual and sequential learning style, revealing the urgency of changes in the strategies of teaching and learning towards a meaningful learning