Abstract:
Management of environmental resources to protect humanity and the
systems that support life is one of the biggest challenges facing modern
societies. This is especially true for Jordan, where fragile environmental
resources started witnessing higher rates of degradation in recent years.
Recognizing this fact and hoping to meet current and future environmental
challenges, German Jordanian University (GJU) decided to offer a unique
program in Environmental Engineering and Management. Being the first
of its kind in the region, the program couples engineering and
management with applied education from the first year of students'
matriculation.
This paper examined the learning styles of environmental engineering
students at GJU using the Index of Learning Styles (ILS) developed by
Soloman and Felder. Fifty undergraduate engineering students took the
assessments. Findings show a strong preference for the visual category on
the ILS. There also was a marked preference for sensing-facts, hands-on,
problem-solving, ?real world? connection and sequential-linear
progression.
The GJU results were compared with the learning styles of civil and
environmental engineering students at Jordan University of Science andTechnology (JUST), another public university in Jordan. The findings
also agree well with the results of Soloman, who surveyed an even larger
number of engineering students. Results from GJU and JUST will be used
as a basis to develop a teaching methodology to support the construction
of student knowledge and prepare them to work in the field.