COMPATIBILITY OF TEACHING STYLES WITH LEARNING STYLES: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

In order to enhance teaching quality and improve its effectiveness, attention must be paid to the compatibility of the instructors’ teaching styles versus the students’ learning styles, which play a vital role in how much knowledge the students can gain from the material presented in class. This paper presents the results of a study carried out on the mechanical engineering students and their instructors at the United Arab Emirates University. Results showed that the students learning styles are balanced: active-reflective, intuitive-sensor, visual-verbal and they prefer global over the sequential learning style. Moreover, the instructor’s teaching styles were a mix of expert, formal-authority, personal-model and delegator. This spectrum of teaching addresses most of the students learning methods, which reflects positively on the learning process. This paper provides recommendations that instructors can implement in order to furthermore enhance enhance the teaching process.