How National Servicemen Are Trained Using Online Learning System - Dissertation Example

Learning is a personal journey of discovery in which each individual would have their own unique style of learning and understanding information. Singapore’s educational system has evolved to “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” that embraces information communication technology (ICT) to support student-centric teaching pedagogies and differentiated instruction that stimulates critical thinking, creativity and independent learning for students as part of the new educational vision.

With 75% of the Singapore population attaining post-secondary education, the males who form about 49% would be conscripted for national service and this required the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) to adapt to the changing educational environment when training for this group.Compulsory National Service (NS) was introduced in 1967 (NLB, 1967) for all Singapore citizens and permanent residents who attained the age of eighteen years old. Due to declining birth rates, technological advancements and manpower requirements that had to be shared with the homeland agencies, the conscription period was standardized for all to twenty-four months in 2004 with an additional reduction of two months for combat fit conscripts as compared to the previous eighteen months’ stint for commanders.

This resulted in reduced training time and there was a need to adapt the training methodologies to suit individual’s learning styles while maximizing ICT which these conscripts were familiar with during their school days.The impact of individual cognitive differences can assist in explaining what type of a learner is more likely to do well in either an online or classroom-based learning environment. Not much is known about the profile and learning styles of national services men who enroll either for classroom or online learning.

The main concern of any education system has always been to get ways through which students can learn more efficiently and most effectively.

It is almost unlikely that proper designing of effective learning environment can be achieved without having proper understanding on how student’s personal profile and learning styles impact on the objective of the whole learning process (Roberts, Kuncel, Shiner, Caspi & Goldberg, 2007). Further clarification of personality characteristics as well individual learning styles, as they contribute to the general performance of the learners in achieving the learning objectives would help the educators in coming up with more operative curricula that r serve the needs of the students in a better way and achieve the learning objectives and expectations (Richardson, Abraham & Bond, 2012).

1.4 Significance of the study

This present study aims to evaluate if the individual personality style and their learning styles impact on the assessment results of the training that uses a mix of self-directed learning using ICT, classroom and hands-on sessions. The results generated from this study will help the instructional designers, educators, trainers and developers of national service men training in increasing the general effectiveness of learning design. Most recent application of the personality trait theory as well as the learning style theory ranges from improving the outcome of the learner to the generation of some sorts of alternative strategies for giving out instructions. The most significant implication from this study will be the relationship between individual personalities and the overall performance outcome. Instructors and designers will greatly benefit from this study by coming up with learning environments which are more effective so as to accommodate variety of learning differences among their students. The other significant element of the present study is the fact that both personality trait as well as learning style can be combined to predict overall performance as per the set learning objectives.

1.5 Thesis outline

This thesis comprise of five main chapters. Chapter one has provided the overall introduction, background of the problem, problem statement, research objectives and significance of the study

Chapter 2 (literature review) involve examinations of a number of literatures from various research done on a number of disciplines including, learner’s personality profiles and how that impact on the learning outcomes as per the intended objectives. Disciplines related to the learning styles of the learners and relevant theories over the same will also be exploited in the literature review.

Chapter 3 (methodology) justifies the paradigms used in the research and approaches for the study and outlines the kind of methodologies that are used in answering the research questions. It gives explanation of the details of the data collection together with the data processing procedures and the techniques of analysis that are developed.

Chapter 4 provides details of data analysis from questionnaire with regards to descriptive statistics using SPSS analysis. The research approach would be to check if the individual personality profiles based on BMTI and individual learning styles based on VARK have any relationship. The research would attempt to analyze if there are any trends that shows that individual learning style has an impact on how the modules are taught. Finally, Chapter 5 presents conclusion and recommendations of the obtained results.

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