Team Design Training: Learning Preferences as a Factor for Identification and Prediction of Students rsquo; Abilities in Design Teams

It is vitally important to recognize the differences in abilities among learners and then adapt training programs to their characteristics in team design training (TDT). According to this background, the present study aims to identify and predict students’ team design ability and its dimensions, content, and process, using their learning preferences (LPs) within the modes of receiving/perceiving information, viz., abstract conceptualization/concrete experience (AC/CE) and processing/internalizing it, namely, active experimentation/reflective observation (AE/RO) in Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory (KELT). In this respect, the self-and-peer assessment (S PA) outcomes in the design teams indicate a significant correlation between the students’ bipolar LPs (BLPs) and their team design ability along with its dimensions, implying that their team design ability can be well predicted from their LPs. It is thus expected that learners who prefer to exploit AC in receiving/perceiving information and AE in processing/internalizing it and those correspondingly choosing CE and AE for the same purposes will have better ability in the content and process dimensions of team design, respectively. Considering the impact of both dimensions and their effectiveness ratio on the overall team design ability, it is concluded that learners who wish to process/internalize information by AE will exhibit higher team design ability.