From Learning Styles to Multiple Modalities in the Teaching of Computer and Information Literacy to First Year Students from Diverse Backgrounds

The University of Pretoria presents an introductory computer and information literacy course to large groups of first-year students. This course was born from the pressure that all students should be computer literate and information literate to diminish the digital divide inequalities. The students come from very diverse socio-economic backgrounds with very different foundational knowledge. Current research shows that an effective way to teach such disparate groups is to match the diversity of students with a variety of instructional modalities. This research reports on the findings from a survey completed by 1 289 computer and information literacy students, to determine if specific students prefer specific learning styles or prefer distinct learning styles for certain curriculum sections. The results reveal that learning styles differ significantly across content areas in digital and information literacy education, such as theory and practicals. In addition, in general, students prefer a variety of different learning styles, which points towards the use of multiple modalities in teaching instead of focusing on individual students’ learning styles.