Leap2A case study 1

Belongs to 2009-03/Leap2A specification

Case study of Leicestershire learning styles
This may be a useful case study, in that it is quite complex and illustrates a range of challenges in representing the outputs of questionnaire-style material in LEAP2A.

The current Leicestershire tool has an exercise to help learners identify their preferred learning style. Four categories of learning style each have a page of questions, with check boxes to check if one agrees with the statement. Reorganising these slightly gives this table.

If the same terms had been used for each of the three questions, with a radio button style input, one could have a three-way category defined. But in fact there is almost no exact duplication in the table, and the actual interface is with check boxes, so each answer is a stand-alone yes-if ticked (and presumably we would to assume no if not ticked).

Purely from appearances, it would seem that the purpose is to gauge the match of a learner's style to four stereotypes. Based on the number of ticks in the different boxes, the learner may conclude that their learning style is more towards one or other of the four given. That would seem to be the main output of interest to PDP, other systems, etc. If the system could export just the conclusions of the exercise, as an entry, that would be one plausible way of using the information collected.

Going to the other extreme, we could define an entry for each checkbox, concatenating the question and the box label in the obvious way. For one example:
 * the title could be "Do you enjoy learning by making presentations?"
 * the content could be "Yes"
 * there could be category attached.

Alternatively, one might have Making presentations I enjoy making presentations. This is a common characteristic of Practical learners.   

The first scheme, in this example, has three terms such as, "Enjoy", "Dislike", "Learn Best", the second scheme has a term for every learning activity, the third category would be of the four learning styles. We might even want to define this last one for LEAP2A, as it is of general interest.

Otherwise, these categories would have to be defined by the host system. A guide for defining your own category schemes will be provided, on the LEAP2A categories page.

It's not clear whether there is an effective middle option that would satisfy everyone. If there isn't, a middle position might be to allow people either approach, as they believed most appropriate. Of course, there is no way in which the summary version can be transformed into the detailed version, but if one used selections to group things together, it would be possible to transform the detailed version into a summary version.