Learning and Perceptual Styles Consideration in the Design of Hypermedia Courseware for Distance Learning

In this study, we carry out a survey of the preferred learning and perceptual styles of students at the University of Mauritius to find out about their learning preferences. This study forms part of a larger research project (HyperLearn) of the development and evaluation of a webbased adaptive hypermedia system for e-learning which keeps an evolving student model with a learning style component that presents the learner with learning material and tutorial activities based on the evolution of his individual learning style(s). We find that current distance learning environments including e-learning are not mainly designed for consideration of students’ individual learning and perceptual styles. We also find that some intelligent tutoring and adaptive systems also do not cater for these aspects in their student and tutoring model. Moreover, TRANSLAB, a system developed in-house shows no significant difference in student performance when compared with those who followed instructor-led courses. We therefore propose to develop an adaptive system that caters for individual learning and perceptual styles to decide for the tutoring strategies.