Maria Kyprianidou’s research while affiliated with Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and other places

This work explores the impact of teacher-led heterogeneous group formation on students’ teamwork, based on students’ learning styles. Fifty senior university students participated in a project-based course with two key organizational features: first, a web system (PEGASUS) was developed to help students identify their learning styles and distribute them to heterogeneous groups. Second, group facilitation meetings were introduced as a technique to help students reflect on their weak/strong traits and employ appropriate roles in their group. The study research questions focused mainly on students’ attitudes regarding the learning style-based group formation approach. By applying qualitative research method students’ views were recorded about the impact of styles awareness and group heterogeneity on group collaboration and possible benefits and drawbacks related to the style-based grouping approach. Evaluation data revealed that students gradually overcame their initial reservations for the innovative group formation method and were highly benefited since styles heterogeneity within the group emphasized complementarities and pluralism in students’ ways of thinking. Overall, this work provides evidence that the adoption of learning styles theories in practice can be facilitated by systems for automated group formation and supportive group facilitation meetings that help avoiding the trivial and discouraging approach of using learning styles to simply label students.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the design and first results of the integration of a web‐based system person‐centred group‐activity support system (PEGASUS) in university instruction, as a means for advancing person‐centred learning by supporting group activity. The PEGASUS is expected to help students and teachers in two distinct objectives: enhancing metacognition (students and teachers are supported to identify their learning and teaching preferences, which in turn is used as a framework for reflection), and group formation (the system suggests homogeneous or heterogeneous workgroups, supporting also teacher‐students negotiations of the final group synthesis). Design/methodology/approach First, a theoretical framework is built to reflect the process of transforming the principles for learner‐centred learning into a pedagogical model which becomes the basis for defining the PEGASUS specifications. Then, qualitative field evidence is provided from the initial integration of the system into the teaching process to support students' group activity. Findings From the pilot testing of PEGASUS it is evident that learning style‐based group formation might not be acceptable to all students in the typical classroom setting where students already know each other. The early implementation data indicate that not every student might accept the theory‐based grouping suggestions of the instructor. Research limitations/implications The research is limited to qualitative and preliminary results from undergraduate as well as postgraduate students. Practical implications Systems like PEGASUS can initiate fruitful discussions among students and teachers on the role of learning styles in learning. However, group activity is a complex socio‐cognitive phenomenon that cannot be approached simply on the basis of students' learning styles. Still, such a system can help identify how students' learning styles can be of significance under certain conditions. Originality/value The paper describes the development of a web‐based system for personalised learning and system integration in everyday teaching.

Learning styles have been used in multiple fields of education as a predictor of students’ academic performance or as a basis for course restructuring and adaptive hypermedia learning environments. Positive aspects of the learning styles approach include the improvement of students’ and teachers’ self-awareness and metacognitive skills and the development of a common vocabulary of learning for dialogue and communication. In addition, person-centred learning offers a supportive framework for the integration of the learning styles theory in learning design. In this work we first present an overview of the ongoing research in the field of cognitive/learning styles with special emphasis on how current research results can be integrated in the design of technology-enhanced learning environments. Furthermore, we speculate on how a learning styles inventory could be used as a tool for supporting technology-enhanced person-centred learning to increase instructors’ and students’ self-awareness and facilitate group collaboration.

In this work we present the early design steps of a system for supporting person-centered learning (PCL), focusing on the process of transforming PCL principles into system specifications. Although person centered learning has gained significant attention in higher education, it is not clear how the instructor can be efficiently supported to manage the additional workload emerging from the effort to promote PCL and address individual studentspsila learning traits and preferences. To cope with this issue we argue that specific technology systems can be built for supporting students and instructors in implementing various PCL-related tasks. In our approach we develop a pedagogical model based on common PCL principles, which will be supported by a Web-based system and will be used to help students and teachers in tasks like: identifying learning and teaching preferences, increasing their meta cognitive awareness, defining homogeneous or heterogeneous workgroups and negotiating their preferences.