Understanding Students’ C Programming Language Learning Styles: A Case Study in College of Science and Technology

Abstract

The first year students are facing difficulties in learning C programming language when the module is being offered in their first year tenure. Ultimately, this leads to an increased failure rates in this module. On the other hand, even the faculties are having strenuous time teaching this module. The main aim of the case study is to assess and determine the different learning styles of first year students from Bachelors of engineering in Information Technology (BE1IT). And then, know the majority of the students’ preferred learning style so that the faculties teaching C programming language are made aware about the findings. And also, recommend the faculty to re-design their pedagogical material to cater students as per their various learning styles. The VARK learning style inventory was adopted for the study which consists of 17 questionnaires. A class of BE1IT with 40 students comprising of 16 female and 24 male students were the participants. All the students were asked to take into consideration of themselves in how they learn best with the module - C programming language and then accordingly attempt those questionnaires and the data was collected. The study showed that majority of the students are kinaesthetic learner irrespective of the genders. The faculty teaching the first year students need to understand that this method may be helpful in helping the students learn better. The pedagogical materials used to teach them may be one of the factor which is not helping them to learn better as it is not correlating with their learning styles. After having known the different type of learners, the faculty were made aware of the findings and were recommended to re-design their pedagogy and andragogy materials accordingly to cater all the students’ learning.

Keywords: Learning styles, C programming language, VARK learning style model, Kinaesthetic

DOI: 10.7176/JIEA/11-1-02

Publication date: January 31^st 2021