Study of architecture students’ learning styles

Learning style is the person's desire to receive and organize information with a particular method or set of methods, and specifically points to the differences in the preferences of the methods of receiving, organizing and processing information and experiences in learning new concepts. Cognitive learning styles are more widely used than other styles and are divided into different categories, one of which is the Kolb’s experimental learning style. The purpose of this study is to determine the students' learning styles in undergraduate architecture students based on Kolb's experimental learning theory. This research begins with the original question of whether a dominant learning style can be described as a common learning style for students of architecture, and the question is whether students' learning styles of architecture are appropriate to the needs and goals of the architecture.
Current research is a descriptive-analytic study that was done in a cross-sectional study in 2017. The research community of all students of Architecture Engineering of Babol Noshirvani university of technology in the first to last grade that was 85 students. The results of the research show that the distribution of architectural students is in the order of priority of divergent learning styles of 60.5% and Accommodate is 25%. Given that the characteristics of learners with a divergent learning style are more in line with the artistic and humanitarian aspects of architecture, and these learners have a strong imagination and great creativity, it can be said to largely correspond to the educational conditions prevailing in this field. But architecture is a multidisciplinary field, and in addition to the artistic and human aspects, its technical aspect is also important, as well as in architecture design courses that cover half of the undergraduate units, due to the dual characteristics of the divergence and the convergence of the design process, It is necessary to strengthen the learning style of these students and to use the many abilities of divergent students in this field, the professors will try to choose methods to cover the weaknesses of students with opposite styles. It can be said that a successful learner in multidisciplinary architecture should be able to strengthen the ability to move in the whole experimental Kolb’s learning cycle and use different learning styles in different stages of design.
Different solutions can be used to achieve this goal. It is necessary for the professors of this field, while recognizing the dominant learning styles of students, to remind students the importance of each of the abilities associated with each learning style in different aspects of architectural design and help them to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Also, by recognizing the differences between different style learners, professors can provide students with the appropriate educational opportunities with different educational methods in time intervals, proportional to the prevailing percentages of each style. Also, performing architectural design projects in a group consisting of different style students is the perfect solution for further engagement and identification of weaknesses and efforts to strengthen them in a team work.