High and Low Achieving Online Graduate Students' Learning Styles and Strategies

Over the last two decades, online learning has become more prevalent in higher education (Allen & Seaman, ۲۰۱۷), and learning has experienced a remarkable change from the traditional classroom to the online learning environment (George & Lal, ۲۰۱۸). With the tremendous growth in the online courses and programs at universities and institutes, for better performance and outcomes, there is a need to identify the factors contributing to enhancing online students’ learning achievement. This study thus aimed to determine the styles and strategies used by online MA students of TEFL and to investigate the relationship among their learning styles, learning strategies, and learning achievement. The participants were ۸۷ online graduate students of TEFL at Iran University of Science and Technology. The instruments included two questionnaires on the learning styles and strategies and the average scores of online students. The results showed that the most learning style preferences were obtained by synthesizing, field-independent, closure-oriented, random-intuitive, and visual, while the lowest ones were obtained by field-dependent, auditory, tactile/kinesthetic, and open. Online students’ highest tendency was related to handling possibilities, while their lowest tendency was concerned with using physical senses. With regard to learning strategies, goal-setting strategies received the highest mean, while task strategies received the lowest mean. The results of binary logistic regression also revealed that the high achievers were mostly grouped into visual, tactile, closure, open, and inclusive learning styles. However, there was not any difference between the high and low-achieving students in the learning strategy use. Online instructors are recommended to pay attention to the styles and strategies of online students and try to choose the appropriate materials and methods based on their styles and strategies. To enhance successful online learning, instructors can also help the online learners get familiar with their learning style preferences and strategies.

کلیدواژه ها:

Learning Strategies ، Learning Styles ، Online Learning ، Learning Achievement ، Online Graduate Students of TEFL