Abstract:

Written and oral communication is a core competence of students that must be learned and evaluated during university studies. In the academic year of 2022/23 a Research Based Learning activity was carried out in Technical University of Madrid. One of the main outputs of that activity was a written report by each student about the research activity developed along the semester. The report should fulfil a research report structure and quite precise instructions were given to the students about the organization of the report (main sections, index, presentation, paginated), orthography and grammatic correction, and design of tables and figures. These aspects were evaluated in the final report and learning styles of the students were assessed according to the model of Honey and Mumford where four styles are defined: Activist, Theorist, Pragmatist and Reflector. The aim of this work is to assess the influence of the learning style of the students in the performance of core competence about writing skills in a RBL activity. There was a negative correlation between the preference for the Activist and Pragmatist styles and the score obtained in the Writing Core Competence in this activity. By the other hand, there was a positive correlation between the Theorist and Reflector learning styles and the score in that skill.

Keywords:

Learning styles, research based learning, core competences, writing skills.