DOMINANT LEARNING STYLES: A CASE OF FIRST-YEAR COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENTS

Aim: This research determined the dominant learning styles of first-year computer science students. Study Design: This is descriptive research that employed a purposive sampling technique to select the study participants. Place and Duration of Study: This study determined the dominant learning style preferences of first-year national diploma computer science students of the Federal Polytechnic, Idah, Nigeria for two academic sessions. Methodology: The study conducted a survey, utilising data collected from a total of 283 students, 191 students during the 2017/2018 and 92 students during the 2018/2019 academic sessions. All participants were asked to fill out the Felder-Soloman Index of Learning Style questionnaire (FS-ILS) offline. FS-ILS consists of 44 items distributed into a pair of four dimensions. Results: This study found that the students have preferences for certain learning styles as defined by the Index of Learning Style instrument. The results revealed that the dominant learning styles are: sensing (76.44%, 70.65%), visual (58.12%, 71.74%), and sequential (80.10%, 68.48%) in the two population samples respectively. Furthermore, the thin difference discovered between the reflective learners (63.87%) in the 2017/2018 academic session and active learners (61.96%) in the 2018/2019 academic session means that they can do well as both active and reflective learners. Conclusion: Educating students to understand their learning style enables them to be cognizant of ways to improve their learning, thereby providing them with a more effective teaching process.