Designing Multimedia Case-Based Instruction Accommodating Students' Diverse Learning Styles

Although many benefits of case-based instruction with multimedia have been reported, there are few empirical studies of how the benefits of multimedia case-based instructions (MCBIs) are mediated by students' individual differences, such as their learning styles. Understanding the relationships between students' learning styles and the learning benefits of MCBIs is important not only for the effective design of case instructions, but also for their appropriate use. The purpose of this study is to investigate how students' learning styles (sensing-intuitive, sequential-global, active-reflective, and visual-verbal dimensions) interact with the students' perceived benefits from the MCBI lesson in order to redesign the MCBI that accommodates students' diverse learning styles. Fifty-seven fourth-year students in a dental school participated in this study. The students were given a one-hour long lesson of MCBI for anesthesiology through the Internet. Then, students' learning styles and their learning experience with the instruction were collected through the Internet. The results of a multiple regression analysis revealed that sensing, sequential, and reflective learners tended to have a more meaningful learning experience with the given MCBI lesson compared with intuitive, global, and active learners. The implications for the design of MCBI and the recommendations for further studies are discussed. (Contains 1 figure and 4 tables.) [Part of this research was sponsored by Educate Co., Ltd. in Seoul, Korea.]