LEARNING STYLES RELATIONSHIP FOR POST-GRADUATE STUDENTS IN PAKISTANI UNIVERSITIES USING CORRELATION MATRIX

Abstract

The current study was conducted to know the relationship of learning styles used by the students of University of Management & Technology and University of Lahore, based upon their disciplines (Science, Humanities and Engineering). This is a quantitative study. Unfortunately, Pakistan is lacking such studies at this level; hence, this is an effort to fill this gap vis-à-vis to enhance the ability of university teachers. The data was collected from 300 gender balanced students through a survey designed by Oxford, and analysed through SPSS. The researcher used independent sample t test, ANOVA and bivariate correlation. The study conducted by using three major variables: gender, affiliations (UMT and UOL) and discipline (Science, Humanities, and Engineering). It was concluded that male and female students have insignificant difference in using learning styles in which male students are favouring visual, and interpersonal learning styles; whereas female students are more prone towards intrapersonal and aural styles.Verbal and physical styles of learning have no significant difference gender wise. One way ANOVA was applied to know the discipline wise difference, which rendered that only the significant difference was found in choosing interpersonal and intrapersonal learning styles by the students of different discipline. The university wise difference rendered the results that there is significant difference in using all learning styles except intrapersonal style in which students of UMT are more visual learners; whereas UOL students are more aural. For other learning styles there is significant difference though a slight tilt towards some learning styles can be seen in the tables except for intrapersonal learning style where there is no significant difference found. It was concluded from correlation matrix that all learning styles are interdependent on one or the other style of learning except interpersonal which is not correlated with other styles. Besides that science and humanities students mostly favoured the same styles. Intrapersonal and aural styles of learning are not favoured by humanities students and aural style is also not liked by science students. The study recommends including those activities which support the particular learning styles based upon the choices of discipline to further the results of university students.