Learning styles and design: The use of ASSIST for reflection and assessment

This paper looks at the role of student awareness of learning styles in helping to both reflect on those styles and to consider their role in a piece of assessed work. Entwistle’s Approaches to Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) is used in these two ways. The first is by getting the students to consider each of the learning styles suggested by ASSIST. The second is by considering whether those results help inform the design and construction of individual learning environments(ILE). Students undertaking a unit in Human Computer Interaction were involved in the study. A range of measures were used to capture the participants responses to their learning styles. These included: reflective journals; a survey; ILE development documentation and the individual learning environment itself. All except the survey were assessed pieces of work. The details of the task of constructing the ILE are presented followed by an initial learning style profile of the respondents. Student comments on the approach and results are discussed and conclusions are drawn on the relevance of this measure of learning style to the design of individual learning environments.