Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Fatemeh Orooji et al.
the other dimensions. Data gathered in this study has violated this assumption somehow; especially it
has shown that MBTI dimensions are strongly correlated highlighted in the middle part of Table 3.
Furthermore, we expected that there would be some acceptable dependencies between modelers'
similar dimensions since they want to guess approximately the same objectives. Analyzing data has
revealed such positive correlations between FLSI and MBTI Sensing dimensions (0.3), and FLSI
Active & MBTI Extroversion dimensions (0.55). In addition there are negative correlations both
between FLSI Visual and MBTI Sensing dimensions (-0.57) and between FLSI Sequential and MBTI
Thinking dimensions (-0. 36).
5.3 Discussion
We have examined two famous modelers in order to check their inter-modelers and intra-modelers
correlations. Experiments have shown that unexpectedly, some MBTI dimensions are strongly
correlated while some FLSI and MBTI are not correlated as much as expected. These results shows
that there is some considerable issues in using just one modeler as a base of adaptation mechanisms
since there may be some inconsistency among its results as (Coffield et al., 2004) has emphasized. It
may be a good idea that some psychologists see the results and try to find some understandable
explanation. At least it has revealed that those LS modelers are not reliable as people expected,
needing to be modified or redesigned for a more reliable usage in investigating learners
characteristics.
Furthermore, since the area of study is limited to some specific students, it may be considered as a
hypothesis that the field of engineering might have lead these outcomes and if we expand the area of
research we may have some more general results.
6. Conclusion
There is a large number of learning styles (LS) introduced by psychologists and have been used in
various web-based educational systems. Some studies have emphasized on the benefits of matching
teaching strategies and learner LSs while some other researchers have explained their doubts about
the value of this kind of matching (Coffield et al., 2004). In addition, the various definitions of LS
concepts make it hard to understand and compare their reports against each other. Each model
incorporates its specific dimensions, and as a result, the generated reports will have specific
representation, which is a challenge for combining a full 360-degree view of a learner.
This paper proposed a new framework for modeling different learning styles attempting to synthesize
various LS inventories into a single representation of learners LSs. Proposed approach allows
administrators to define various LS modelers through its predefined constructing phases. Answering
available questionnaires, learner receives some comprehensive reports consist of his/her recognized
LSs due to different aspects of different models. Considering pedagogical instruction, system provides
some recommendations based on each learner detected LSs. These reports may help learners to
improve their meta-cognition skills and to plan some more efficient strategies for their studies. They
may be considered as guidelines for system designers and course instructors in order to be
implemented in a content adaptation mechanism. In addition, the proposed system has provided
some representation facilities to show the situation of each learner among the others, enabling
him/her to compare his/her detected LSs reported by different models and evaluate the results.
Utilizing the proposed system in an educational environment has revealed some dependencies
between a modeler dimensions as well as some inconsistencies among two modelers' dimensions.
Results make it more emphasized that recognition of a person’s learning styles really needs more
than one modeler. Since there are some serious comments about modelers validities and
consistencies (Coffield et al., 2004), integrating modelers' reports may decrease the effects of their
insufficient theoretical basis, providing learners a more reliable knowledge about their characteristics.
This study was limited to some popular learning style modelers that are more suitable in web-based
learning systems, neglecting the others at this phase. Since there is no comprehensive LS
questionnaire, learner is recommended to fill out different questionnaires, and as a result, this
constraint may lead to a decrease in his/her satisfaction. It seems this area of research really needs
additional studies made by educational psychologist to construct an inclusive questionnaire, capable
to detect all aspects of learner characteristics. In addition, to have more accurate and more reliable
results, it is necessary to demand a large number of learners to participate in the future steps of this
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