Adaptive Education based on Learning Styles: Are Learning Style Instruments Precise Enough?

Abstract

Investigating the efficiency of learning style instruments is significant because it is a widespread technique and it enriches the understanding of the challenges of integrating such instruments into adaptive education systems. The results showed that current learning style instruments depend only on the textual form of infor-mation to present items; this might be leading to a bias in the measurement of learning styles as the textual forms of information are more suitable for verbal students than for others. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the precision of learning style instruments and the challenges of integrating them into adaptive education systems. This research followed a quantitative research approach. First, a new learning style instrument was developed using different forms of infor-mation (Figures, Charts, and Equations). Then, the preferred learning style of fif-ty students was measured twice, initially, by using the newly developed instru-ment and subsequently by using a VARK instrument, the results of both were compared.