The issue of learning styles and how they affect students' attitudes to
pursuing online courses is a key issue for the development of web-based teaching.
The focus of this article is how learning styles seem to have affected
students' attitudes to undertaking the web-based Language and
Style course at Blackpool and The Fylde College in 2004–5. The course
was delivered in a blended format, incorporating both web-based and traditional
teaching. The students' learning styles were assessed both at the onset and
the end of the course. In this article I discuss students' reactions to the
course and how these might be linked to the learning styles they exhibited at the
time of the assessments. As a result of the investigation reported here, I suggest
that an initial assessment of learning styles can be useful in predicting the kinds
of web-based activities likely to prove valuable to the individual student.
Potentially, this has consequences for the development of web-based and other
learning materials in other subject areas.
