Technology instruction to target women and minorities Julio Garcia &amp; Patricia Backer Department of Aviation and Technology San Jose State University Goals Summarize key research on learning styles with women and minority students

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Summarize key research on learning styles with women and minority students

Discuss how technology instruction and curriculum could be adapted and developed to meet the learning styles of women and underrepresented minorities and to help students become more technologically literate

Demonstrate implementation of learning styles research into curriculum for electronics instruction

Kolb describes learning style within a two-factor model. The perceiving factor, which Kolb defines as how one takes in or processes experience, ranges from Concrete Experience (CE) to Abstract Conceptualization (AC). The second factor is how one processes information; this ranges from Active Experimentation (AE) to Reflective Observation (RO). A combination of scores on the CE-AC and AE-RO scales classifies the learner into one of four learning styles.

Accommodators focus on the question, “what would happen if I did this?” These learners learn well from hands-on experiences and rely more on feelings rather than logical analysis. This learning style is evidenced in “action-oriented careers such as marketing and sales.” Kolb (1999).

Assimilators like to answer the question, "what is there to know?" These learners can understand a wide range of information and put this information into a logical and organized form. This style is seen often in those who are in information and science-related careers (Kolb, 1999).

Convergers seek to find practical use for ideas and theories and prefer to work with technical tasks and problems rather than with interpersonal tasks. People in technology careers tend to have this learning style (Kolb, 1999).

Divergers are focused on the "why" of a situation. They tend to be very cognizant of their environment and like to gather information from a wide range of sources. Divergers are prevalent in the arts, entertainment, and service fields.

active/reflective--An active learner learns by trying things out and enjoys working in groups while a reflective learner learns by thinking things through and prefers to work alone or with a single individual.

sensing/intuitive--A sensing person is a concrete thinker, is practical, and oriented towards facts and procedures; and an intuitive person is an abstract thinker, innovative, and oriented toward theories and underlying meanings.

visual/verbal--A visual learner prefers visual representations such as diagrams, pictures and flow charts and a verbal learner prefers written and spoken explanations.

sequential/global--A sequential learner uses a linear thinking process and learns in small incremental steps while a global learner uses a holistic thinking process and learns in large leaps.

Felder and Spurlin (2005) summarized the data from ten student populations at six institutions (three at Ryerson, two at Tulane, and one each at Kingston, Iowa State, Limerick, Michigan, and Michigan Tech).

“Undergraduate engineering students at a variety of institutions are therefore more consistently more active than reflective and more sensing than intuitive, much more visual than verbal, and more sequential than global” (p. 109)

Is there a dominant learning style among Industrial Technology students at San Jose State University? and

What is the relationship between student achievement and learning style?

This research was focused on surveying students who had taken most if not all of their BSIT classes. All seniors in the Industrial Technology program at San Jose State University were surveyed in Spring 2002 using the Kolb Learning Style Inventory.

As the assimilator style is seen often in those who are in information and science-related careers (Kolb, 1999), this finding implies that BSIT majors do not have the learning style that would be expected from previous research at SJSU on Engineering students (Mourtos, 1996) that found that 40% were assimilators.

At SJSU, the Department of Technology and Aviation is located within the College of Engineering so these differences relative to student learning styles could have a greater effect.

Research suggests that ethnic minorities and women work best when students work in teams and have a high level of hands-on experimentation and problem-solving.

As Philbin et al (1995) found in their research on gender differences in learning styles, there are significant differences in learning styles between the genders. Using Kolb’s schema for learning styles, they found that the “learning style that seems to fit women the least is the Assimilator…this style best fits men.” They further observe that female students work best in hands-on and practical settings.

Hlawaty (2002, p. 8) also found gender differences in learning styles among 869 German adolescents. German women preferred to learn with more variety than did men, “they need more options regarding educational scenarios, including working independently, in pairs, with peers, in larger groups, and with teachers.”

In an international study of learning styles and gender, Honigsfeld and Dunn (2003) investigated gender differences of 1,637 adolescents from five countries (New Zealand, Sweden, Bermuda, Brunei, and Hungary). Although there were different gender differences found by country, three elements (self-motivation, persistence, and responsibility) were common to all countries.

McShannon and Derlin (2000) analyzed the learning styles of 515 undergraduate engineering students in three universities in New Mexico to see if there were any differences in how students perceive they learn best. In their research, they focus on students’ interaction styles rather than their learning styles.

McShannon and Derlin (2000) found that interactive learning styles differed among ethnic and gender subgroups. Student who traditionally are most successful in undergraduate engineering classes (white students and senior students), use the interactive learning style. That is, they most often learn by themselves. In contrast, “learning with other students contributed most highly to minority student success…”

Behm et al (1996), through the NSF-funded Pac-TECH project, conducted research with teachers from elementary to university level to analyze why “some students are uncomfortable with science, mathematics, engineering, and technology.” The researchers focused on four underrepresented groups in these fields: African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and women.

The researchers proposed criteria or specifications that could be used in classrooms and gave examples of how teachers can apply these criteria to their classrooms.

Presenting the world as a dynamic system of interconnections and discovery

A solution allows a discovery process and acknowledges uncertainty in acquiring knowledge.

A solution includes open ended problems

A solution insures subjects are alive and holistic. The systems view looks at the world in terms of relationships and integration. Example: Hale-Benson (1986) found that the African American culture has a more relational style of learning—person-centered, expressive, affective, and valuing the unique rather than the regular.

A solution explores technology’s role in society

A solution promotes social interaction and human interconnections. Integrate cooperative experiences into the existing curriculum (Institute for Responsive Education, 1986).

A solution develops a comfortable classroom environment. Example: Developing a curriculum that focuses on real-world problems may be useful in recruiting women into STEM careers. Using everyday household items makes science and technology appear to be less intimidating (Travis, 1993) .

A solution that supports a cooperative learning environment. Several underrepresented groups in STEM including Hispanics and other students of color and women, areas motivated by affiliation and cooperation rather than competition (Delpit, 1995; Grossman, 1984).

A solution vitalizes physical space. Example: An exciting technology classroom can be created by hanging bicycle parts on the walls. Then, one can add posters, ads, information as to how bicycles are used throughout the world.

Integrates family and community. Mexican Americans consider family and personal relationships as important and are more comfortable with broad concepts than with component facts and specifics (Guild, 1994, p. 17; Vasquez, 1991).

Encourages the use of original resources such as scientific reports, fiction, non-fiction, etc.

Instead of giving students the lab experiments in a cookie recipe format, students were given statements that forced them to work in groups, come up with different approaches to solve the statements, simulate their alternatives using the computer simulation programs Multisim 7 and/or LabVIEW 7, and then choose the best alternative.

Build a circuit that converts resistance changes to voltage changes. We need to drive a 50  load and we have only a single supply of 10 V. One of the resistances is an RTD that has a nominal resistance of 150  at 25 C. Due to product specs two resistances should have 220  and 470 .

Build a closed-loop system indicating all the required stages and feedback. This is an open design in that you need to provide what you want to control and its limits. Based on what you need to control then design the appropriate system.