Rethinking learning approaches in digital electronics education: Analyzing the experiential learning in a technical course in Brazil

Abstract

Teaching-learning approaches in digital electronics education have a key role in technical education and in a further transition to technology related professions. Since there are few studies in literature in this area, this paper aims to contribute with an investigation about students’ progress in a mechatronics technical course at a public institution in Brazil. The main objective is to analyze whether the learning style is related to the performance of the students. Digital electronics has theory and practice, so an experiential framework is used to obtain the reference learning styles from classes in the years 2022 and 2023. In order to have feedback and gather more information, a survey about the course is also conducted. Basic normality test is applied to data and different metrics are compared by correlation analysis. Similarly to other studies in literature, only weak or very weak correlation is found. However, it was identified a simple metric with a strong correlation with the grades when compared with the reference learning styles. This perspective could improve the understanding about students’ characteristics in developing the contents. Specifically, this study contributes to the literature in a sense that the findings here reported suggested that the predilection for a specific learning style or stage is less important when compared to how pronounced the student is in any of them.