Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Fatemeh Orooji et al.
awareness and lead to more organized and effective approaches to teaching and learning. To
address this issue, our interest concerned providing a unified methodology to define and represent
various models’ dimensions through predefined construction phases. Our depicted mechanism has
illustrated the selected models in a similar structure and moved toward a comprehensive LS provided
for each user based on different aspects of utilized modelers in addition to some facilities to compare
their results in some understandable representations. In this way, there is a possibility to have a more
precise picture of each learner decreasing the amount of uncertainty which he/she will be interfaced
by trying just one modeler (due to the modeler inconsistency and unreliability (Coffield et al., 2004)).
The paper is organized as follows. We begin with a brief overview of LS theory in section 1 followed
by a description of some known LSs in details. Our proposed approach for defining a LS and its
different dimensions is then introduced. Section 4 is devoted to the depiction of our unified LS
modeling system to point out some of its features. Some outcomes of utilizing the proposed system
are explained in Section 5. Finally, we present some conclusions and recommendations for further
study.
2. Background
Learning style is one of learner individual traits typically defined as the way people prefer to learn,
representing their habitual manner of acquiring knowledge and skills via studying or experiencing
(Coffield et al., 2004). Understanding LS enables a learner to improve their self-awareness and metacognition
skills, to develop his/her natural approaches to learning, and even to provide more capacity
to learn in ways that he/she may require more efforts. If students know about their LSs and
preferences, they can select better choices about learning tasks they should engage with. On the
other hand, knowing the LS may enrich instructors’ information about their students, leading them to
develop a range of teaching strategies to engage learner individual strengths. Some studies have
demonstrated benefits of adapting learning contents and activities based on learners’ LS (Siadaty and
Taghiyareh, 2007) while some other researchers have some doubts about the correctness and
necessity of such adaptation (Coffield et al., 2004).
2.1 LS modeling approaches
Generally, there are two learner modeling approaches as follows (Brusilovsky and Millán, 2007):
Collaborative: In this approach, users explicitly provide information about themselves via filling out a
questionnaire. Although this approach provides reliable information, most of earners do not like
spending a considerable amount of time to fill corresponding questions. Almost all LS modelers
introduce their special questionnaires, some explained in following sections.
Automatic: In this approach, the system implicitly gathers any information needed while users are
working/learning. Class discussion/student reflection, instructor observations, cognitive sciences or
artificial intelligence are all utilized in this approach, no need to ask implicit questions.
2.2 Learning style main parameters
Learning preferences related to different LSs can be summarized as follows (Popescu et al., 2007):
Environment, Physical dimensions, Perception modality, Field dependence/field independence,
Processing information, Reasoning, Organizing information, Motivation, Persistence, Pacing, Social
aspects, Study organization, Coordinating instance.
Also, there is an "Onion Model" which categorizes LSs into four layers (E.Popescu et al., 2007):
Personality Models focus on the personality traits of the learner and the way they influence the
learning process.
Information Processing Models focus on the processes of acquiring, ordering, and engaging with
information.
Social Interaction Models focus on the collaborative aspects of the learning process.
Instructional Preference Models focus on the environmental, emotional, and sociological
preferences of the learner.
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