INFLUENCE OF CULTURE ON LEARNING STYLES OF BUSINESS STUDENTS

Bijayananda Naik
The University of South Dakota
ABSTRACT
The Index of Learning Styles (ILS) instrument based on the Felder-Silverman Learning
Style Model was used to investigate the influence of culture on learning style distribution of
business students. Business students from three distinctly different cultures, namely, western,
middle-eastern, and eastern cultures were surveyed in this research. Western culture was
represented by the United States, middle-eastern culture by Egypt, and eastern culture by South
Korea. Results of this study show that most business students, in all three cultures, have a
balanced learning style in each of the four learning style dimensions of the Felder-Silverman
model. A comparison of learning style distributions of business students belonging to the three
cultures revealed small but statistically significant differences.