A Cross-cultural Comparison of Learning Styles: The AUS-UMD Experience

Identification of learning styles is an issue with a long history, most of it taking place outside of science and engineering education. Very little effort has been devoted to study these profiles for Middle-Eastern students and contrastive studies of Middle-Eastern and American learning styles are rarely found. In this paper, the learning style profiles of introductory computer engineering students at the American University of Sharjah (AUS), (United Arab Emirates) are established and analyzed. A cross-cultural study between AUS and University of Minnesota Duluth (United States) computer science students is carried out with reference to learning styles, background characteristics and outcomes. Our results indicate that there seem to be strong similarities in learning styles of these culturally diverse students. However, it is difficult to establish a clear relationship between learning styles and course outcomes across cultures.