Use of Decision Models in a Diverse Learning Environment 57 Use of Decision Models in a Diverse Learning Environment

Students in general, but particularly those in introductory courses and/or those from campuses with a multicultural student population, have very definite but decidely different information gathering and processing styles. In environments such as those described above there is a need for both student awareness of their cognitive preferences and use of a cognitive model by faculty in course design and teaching. Cognitive models describe four different information gathering and processing types. The purpose of this paper is to explain the importance of this cognitive model in a diverse learning environment.