A Comparative Study of Learning Style Preferences Between American and Chinese Undergraduate Engineering Students

This paper presents the results of a comparative study of learning style preferences between American and Chinese undergraduate engineering students. A total of 132 sophomore engineering students from two American and Chinese universities responded to an Index of Learning Styles (ILS) survey. The survey is a 44-item, self-scoring questionnaire that assesses learning style preferences on four pairs of dimensions of the Felder-Silverman model: active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal, and sequential/global. Descriptive statistics and independent sample t-tests are performed to analyze students' responses to the survey. The results show that statistically significant differences exist in four dimensions (reflective, sensing, visual, and verbal) between American and Chinese students. Overall, American students show higher preferences in all four of these dimensions than do Chinese students.