Unified Model for Learning Style Recommendation

Abstract

Studying computer programming requires not only an understanding of theories and concepts but also coding adeptness. Success in studying or conducting such a course is definitely a challenge. This paper proposes a systematic learning style recommendation. The model is designed to evaluate students’ attributes and ongoing or formative learning outcomes for suggesting the effective style-fit strategy that facilitates learners to enhance their learning performances in terms of knowledge and skill. A two-stage association analysis was designed and conducted on a dataset collected from IT major students who enrolled in the Introduction to Computer Programming course. The first stage of association rules is to analyze and discover important relationships amongst learning styles, students’ attribute, and learning performance. The second stage of moderation analysis is then applied to probe the moderation effect of the different learning preferences on the relationship between student attributes and learning achievement. Experiments expose many insights, for example, mathematics and logical thinking are powerful assets of success in computer programming study. Association rules can effectively identify associations of learning styles and the learning performance in terms of knowledge or skills. By moderation analysis, students in the “Excellent” cluster have a broad learning style than other students. Two types of significant moderators, the universal and specific, exemplify how lecturers can flexibly post style-fit teaching strategies for a class-wide and specific group, respectively.