LEARNING STYLES AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN ELECTRONICS AND AUTOMATIC ENGINEERS

The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether exists a relationship between the learning styles of students in a Higher Education environment, specifically in engineering studies, and their academic performance.

Learning in a structured educational setting may be thought of as a two-step process involving the reception and processing of information. According to this, students learn in different ways. Students have preferences and individual ways of perceiving and processing information. These individual preferences are the so-called learning styles.

There are several models that have been developed to understand and evaluate individual learning styles and their dimensions, as well as a variety of inventories of learning styles. In this work we will use Kolb's approach (1984).Kolb’s approach consists of three main components: a theory of experiential learning; a learning cycle graphical model; and the Learning Styles Inventory (LSI), an instrument for testing and applying the theory. Kolb's theory states that learning is a cognitive process that involves constant adaptation and interaction with the environment. People create knowledge from experience instead of just receiving instruction. According to Kolb, learning styles are relatively stable modes according to which individuals acquire and process information to act and solve problems, in this way he says that in order to learn it is necessary to have four basic capacities that are: concrete experience, reflexive observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation. The four learning styles are: diverging (feeling and watching), assimilating (watching and thinking), converging (doing and thinking), and accommodating (doing and feeling).

The methodology used to perform the analysis is based on the Kolb survey on Learning Styles. This is a closed survey in which students must rank according to different statements. When processing it, the styles of each of the students are obtained. The survey will be carried out to 60 students of the Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Electronics and Automation Engineering who study the course of Industrial Production Systems in 4th year. The learning styles were compared with the academic performance obtained in the different evaluation activities of the courses. This will provide information on the relationship of the activities carried out and the learning styles. This analysis will establish a basis for improvement for subsequent design of the course.