What Type of Thinkers are Online Distance Education Students?

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• What Type of Thinkers are Online Distance
  Education Students?
• by

Aaron S. Richmond Leping Liu University of
Nevada, Reno
H. Mark Krank University of Montana, Western
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Importance of Problem

• Thiele (2003) suggested that because there has
  been a recent exponential increase of courses
  offered in a purely online setting, there is a
  critical need for evaluating and assessing  the
  quality of online learning and learner outcomes.
• Maddux et al., (2002) stressed the importance of
  adapting online education to individual student
  learning styles.

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Literature Review

• Simpson and Du (2004) investigated learning
  styles in online courses.
• They found that learning style significantly
  affects students perceptions of class enjoyment.
• Problems with this study
• Did not investigate whether there were higher
  frequencies of a given learning style enrolled in
  their courses.
• The authors used Kolbs (1984) Learning Style
  Inventory, rather than Sternbergs (1997)
  Thinking Styles.

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Literature Review

• Richmond and Liu (2005) studied the distribution
  of Kolbs (1984) Learning Styles of pre-service
  education majors in both traditional and online
  courses.
• They did not find a disproportionate amount of
  type of learning style in either class format
  (traditional vs. online).
• Problems with study
• They did not look at Sternbergs Thinking Styles.

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Research Question

• What is the distribution of Sternbergs Thinking
  Styles in students who attend online distance
  education courses?

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Operational Definitions

• Thinking Styles Robert Sternberg (1997) seeks to
  understand the type of thinking of those students
  who have been labeled as different or do not fit
  in.
• Sternberg has described 13 separate
  characteristics in five categories, which
  comprise the Thinking Styles Theory and
  Inventory.

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Function Characteristic

• Functions are the three basic types of Thinking
  Styles.
• Legislative people are very independent and
  decide how to do things on their own. They can be
  creative and self-supporting.
• Executive thinkers like to follow the rules and
  go along with pre-established systems.
• Judicial individuals test whether pre-established
  rules and systems are necessary or valid. They
  are often critical and question everything.

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Form Characteristic

• Forms are the general way in which we approach
  our environment.
• Monarchic thinkers are single-minded and driven
  and focused when solving problems.
• Hierarchic individuals set priorities and
  understand that not all goals can be fulfilled.
• Oligarchic people can multitask but are unsure of
  how to organize their priorities.
• Anarchic individuals are motivated by their
  specific needs and do not follow systems and
  construct their own systems.

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Level Characteristic

• Levels is the characteristic which seeks to
  identify how individuals view the world.
• Global people are prone to tackle immense and
  abstract problems. They are thought to be the
  dreamers or those who are thought to be on Cloud
  Nine .
• Local individuals prefer to work on well-defined
  problems and lose sight of the bigger picture.

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Scope Leaning Characteristics

• Scope is a form of mental self-government, which
  seeks to identify the internal and external
  issues that an individual deals with on a daily
  basis.
• Internal thinkers are introspective and less
  aware of the outside world and prefer to work
  alone on projects rather than in groups.
• External people are extroverted, outgoing, people
  oriented, and work well in groups.
• Leanings characteristic attempts to assess risk
  taking behavior and general perspective on
  processes involved in problem solving.
• Liberal people question procedures and rules by
  going beyond them.
• Conservative individuals like to follow the
  rules, minimize change, avoid ambiguous
  situations where possible.

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Participants

• 65 students from two small liberal arts
  universities and one state university
  participated in this study.
• Ps were recruited from classes ranging from
  freshman level introductory philosophy courses to
  senior level psychology courses.
• 46 females (70.8) and 19 males (29.2).

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Measures

• Two measures were used in this study.
• Demographic Survey
• The SWTSI (Sternberg, 1997). For each
  characteristic there are eight questions on a 1-7
  point Likert scale with 1 Not at All Well and 7
  Extremely Well.
• 13 learning style characteristics with 104
  questions total.
• Scores are then averaged over each
  characteristic.

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Procedure

• All measures were delivered and completed online.
  Ps completed the survey and submitted their
  results to the instructor electronically.
• The delivery of measures was counterbalanced.

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Results

• Results from Chi-Square for Goodness of Fit
  indicate a significant difference in the
  distribution of
• Functions (X²41.02, df2, X²critical5.99,
  a.05, effect size .32)
• Forms (X²61.46, df3, X²critical7.82, a.05,
  effect size .32)
• Leanings (X²5.54, df1, X²critical3.84, a.05,
  effect size .08).
• There were no significant difference in
  distribution of Scope, and Levels

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Results
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Results
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Limitations

• Data collection for this study is ongoing. We
  would like to collect 120 Ps to boost the power
  and make the analyses more robust (Green et al.,
  2000).
• We are still recruiting participants and
  discussion on the preliminary results should be
  considered with caution.
• We would also like to have a proportionate amount
  of males and females in the sample.

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Discussion

• Results indicate that there is an overwhelming
  amount of Legislative, Hierarchical, and Liberal
  thinkers
• Hierarchical style. Sternberg suggests that
  Hierarchical thinkers are excellent at allocating
  time, prioritizing, and organizing.
• From our experience, online courses require
  students to be self-paced and self-motivated with
  an environment that is foreign to most
  traditional students.
• Presumably, the Hierarchical thinker would excel
  in such an environment.

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Future Research

• We wish to design online curriculum based on the
  three types of learning styles and test to see if
  students have more academic success when they
  have the opportunity to engage in an activity
  that is conducive to their style.
• This study is only a preliminary analysis of
  thinking styles in online learning.

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• Questions, Concerns, or Comments?

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References

• Green, S. B., Salkind, N. J., Akey, T. M.
  (2000). Using SPSS for Windows Analyzing and
  Understanding Data. Upper Saddle River, NJ
  Prentice Hall.
• Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning
  Experience as the Source of Learning and
  Development, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey
  Prentice Hall.
• Maddux, C. D., Ewing-Taylor, J. Johnson, L. D.
  (2002). Distance education Issues and concerns
  symposium. Computers in the Schools, 19 (3/4),
  1-220.
• Richmond, A. S., Liu, L. (2005). Student
  learning styles of traditional courses versus
  online distance courses. In C. Crawford, R.
  Carlsen, I. Gibson, K. McFerrin, J. Price, R.
  Weber D. A. Willis (Eds.), Technology Teacher
  Education Annual 2005 (pp. 576-578).
  Charlottesville, VA AACE
• Simpson, C. Du, Y. (2004). Effects of learning
  styles and class participation on students'
  enjoyment level in distributed learning
  environments. Journal of Education for Library
  and Information Science, 45(2), 123-13.
• Sternberg, R. J. (1997). Thinking Styles.
  Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press.
• Thiele, J. E. (2003). Learning patterns of online
  students. Journal of Nursing Education, 42(8),
  364-366.