LEARNING STYLES AND PERFORMANCE IN DISTANCE EDUCATION: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF ACCOUNTING STUDENTS

Abstract

The objective of the present study is to verify whether the performance of distance education students in the disciplines General Accounting and Management Accounting, as well as in the overall Accounting module, differs according to their learning style. The survey was conducted among 109 students in a distance education course and used learning style as the independent variable (verified by Kolb’s LSI), and the average grade received in the subjects general accounting and management accounting and the Accounting module as the dependent variable (average between the grades in general and management accounting). Reliability tests were conducted (Cronbach's alpha) on Kolb's LSI instrument, along with tests for data normality. Furthermore, we performed descriptive statistical analysis and tests for differences of means (Kruskal-Wallis and ANOVA) to answer the research question. The results show that most students have an assimilating style (44%) and (34%) are divergent. These indicate that it was not possible to establish that learning styles cause a difference in the performance of students. Therefore, one cannot affirm that any one learning style showed higher performance on average than other styles in the distance course. Considering the small number of observations, the conclusions should not be generalized.