Smart teaching quantitative topics through the VARK learning styles model

Abstract

Effective teaching concerns students' learning styles and its diversity. An adopted teaching strategy must be then aligned with students' learning traits. In this paper, to provide an effective in-classroom learning environment for most students, we propose to develop appropriate instructional presentation methods to match diversity of learning styles. We demonstrate how to align in-class instructions, such as quizzes and other in-class learning activities, with students' learning styles. Our discussion, which primarily focuses on quantitative topics, relies on research in education and applied psychology, and our teaching experience. Here, we utilize the Fleming's VARK learning style model. We then address some shortcomings of identifying students' learning styles through a generic questionnaire, and propose a scheme to dynamically infer them. This automatic student modeling approach can be easily adopted in distance education.