Dewar & Whittington (2000)

[see: Online Learners and their Learning Strategies]

Looks at how adults make use of their MBTI type to cope with the challenges of learning in an online environment. Uses MBTI to help understand how different personalities interact in online learning situations.

This paper used characteristics by Lawrence (which were compiled with F2F interactions in mind). These characteristics were applicable to the online experience - with the exception of thinking/feeling.

Participants were asked to comment on how some adaptations were made for the online environment and what strategies they developed. These are very interesting. In a nutshell: though the online environment is suggested to benefit introverts etc the extraverts etc have found it appealing for different reasons. So folk accommodate in their own way.

Thinking-Feeling preference showed a marked sex difference, because feeling characteristics have stereotypically been assigned to women, whilst thinking characteristics to men. Myers thinks that women with thinking and men with feeling preferences tend to learn the art of colouration so that they fit better with the sex stereotypes. Also the type of course will influence the types in it. A leadership program for example will not attract thinkers (work alone) as much as feelers (group work).

Feelers found online communication cold and impersonal, and given the choice, would choice F2F over online. The thinkers did not mention this. Feelers demonstrated similar strategies to extraverts for dealing with this.

Feeling types showed a clear preference for the more informal areas of the discussion board where their postings reveal them developing relationships with other reasearch participants. The thinking types, on the other hand, posted little in the informal areas, and conficed their comments to the research area.

There is a slight preference for extraverts to enter more in the informal areas, while the introverts entered more into the assigned tasks as long and the sensing/intuition dimensionis controlled for.

Implications:
While designers of online learning can use a variety of instructional techniques to engage as many learning styles as possible they cannot accommodate every learning style. The real power of using learning styles is to provide learners with the appropriate tools and insight to:

a. explore and identify their preferred approaches to learning
b. recognise a particular experience may not meet their learning style
c. take steps to change the situation to suit their learning style
d. or consciously move out of their comfort zone to develop competence in a variety of learning styles