Understanding Engineering Students’ Learning Styles

Abstract

During the first two years of an Engineering Undergraduate degree, all engineering students are exposed to multidisciplinary courses and a variety of different faculty members, regardless of their major. The pressing question in this case is whether these multidisciplinary courses are designed to cater for students" specific learning styles, especially when they are offered in specialized institutions like the Petroleum Institute, which aims to prepare engineers to join the workforce at one of the leading oil and gas companies in the United Arab Emirates. In this study, the Vark questionnaire for young learners was used to study freshmen engineering students" learning styles to see whether gender had any impact on these students" learning styles. The aim of this research is to utilize this information and apply the results in the teaching methods used by freshman year teachers and more specifically the way language teachers approach engineering students.