Smart teaching quantitative topics through the VARK learning styles model

Effective teaching concerns students´ learning styles and its diversity. An adopted teaching strategy must be then aligned with students´ learning traits. In this paper, to provide an effective in-classroom learning environment for most students, we propose to develop appropriate instructional presentation methods to match diversity of learning styles. We demonstrate how to align in-class instructions, such as quizzes and other in-class learning activities, with students´ learning styles. Our discussion, which primarily focuses on quantitative topics, relies on research in education and applied psychology, and our teaching experience. Here, we utilize the Fleming´s VARK learning style model. We then address some shortcomings of identifying students´ learning styles through a generic questionnaire, and propose a scheme to dynamically infer them. This automatic student modeling approach can be easily adopted in distance education.