SoTL Commons Conference Presenters
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Do Teaching & Learning Styles Affect Student Performance Across Levels of Learning? [pr-1]
Milind Shrikhande (Georgia State University): mshrikhande@gsu.edu
Richard Fendler (Georgia State University): rfendler@gsu.edu
Craig Ruff (Georgia State University): cruff@gsu.edu
What role do teaching and learning styles play in improving student performance at different levels of learning? We address the question using a sample of 250 students taught by five different instructors in multiple sections of the core corporate finance undergraduate course offered to all undergraduate business majors as a mandatory course. We also explore the conjecture made by Felder and Solomon that the balanced learner exhibits better overall performance than the extreme learner. We find the learning styles of students, though widely dispersed in any given sample, are usually just five/six dominant styles exhibited by no less than 60 – 70% of the students. We therefore focus on just these dominant learning styles in our empirical analysis while analyzing the affect of learning styles on student performance. Our research would be useful across a wide spectrum of schools that offer the core finance course as mandatory for the undergraduate students.