Richard Felder’s Responses to Frequently Asked Questions about the ILS

Note: In the responses to the questions below there are links to many web pages that have recently been migrated to a new server. Some of the links are still not functional, as you will discover if you click on them. We are currently working to fix them, and in the meanwhile we apologize for the inconvenience.

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- How do I get my results? Can you (RF) send them to me?
  When you check answers to all 44 items on the questionnaire and click on “Submit,” your learning style profile should immediately be returned on your computer. The results are not stored, copied, or sent to anyone but you, and neither Dr. Felder nor anyone else can send them to you. If you don’t get them automatically, either you made a mistake in filling out the questionnaire or you are accessing an obsolete version (see next question).
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  - Does anybody but me see the results when I submit the questionnaire?
    No. Your response data and your learning style profile are not stored or sent to anyone other than you and cannot be recovered once you have received the profile.
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  - Why do I get an error message when I submit the completed questionnaire?
    If you complete the questionnaire on-line and try to submit it and you get a message that the file cannot be found or the address is invalid, you’re probably either accessing an obsolete version of the instrument or your pop-up blocker is keeping the instrument from functioning properly. To get to the right version, go to https://www.webtools.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/. Complete and submit the questionnaire. A form showing your learning style profile should be returned immediately. If you know you are accessing the most recent version of the instrument and you get the error message, try turning off your pop-up blocker and completing and submitting the form once more.
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  - I don’t understand my results. Can you explain what they mean?
    The four scales of the ILS, the two opposite categories of each scale, and study tips for people in each category are outlined in a short document entitled
    Learning Styles and Strategies. (Click on the title to open it in a new tab.) If your score on, say, the active(A)-reflective(R) scale is 1 or 3 on the A side, it means you have a mild preference for active learning. If you score 5 or 7 on the R side, you have a moderate preference for reflective learning, and if your A score is 9 or 11 you have a strong preference for active learning.
    For much more information about learning styles, click here.
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  - Here are my results. Based on them, can you suggest good ways for me to study or good careers for me to pursue?
    Study tips for students with different learning style preferences are offered in
    Learning Styles and Strategies (click on the title to open it in a new tab).
    Learning styles are not good guides to choosing college majors or careers. They are preferences, not reliable indicators of strengths and weaknesses. The fact that you have a preference for sensing says nothing about how good or bad you are at intuitive skills–or for that matter at sensing skills–and people with every possible learning style have succeeded brilliantly in every possible career. A much better way to choose a career is to identify something you’re good at and love to do, and then find a way to do it for a living.
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  - How did the ILS originate, and what is its theoretical basis?
    The Index of Learning Styles was created in 1991 by Richard M. Felder, a chemical engineering professor at North Carolina State University, and Barbara A. Soloman, then the coordinator of advising for the N.C. State First-Year College. The four learning style dimensions of the instrument were adapted from a model developed in 1987 by Dr. Felder and Dr. Linda K. Silverman, an educational psychologist then at the University of Denver. The first version of the instrument was administered to several hundred students and the data were subjected to a factor analysis. Items that did not load heavily on one and only one item were replaced with new items to eventually obtain the current 44-item version of the instrument. The ILS was installed on the World Wide Web in 1996. It gets close to a million hits per year and has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, and several other languages.
    Click here to view “Learning and Teaching Styles in Engineering Education,” the 1988 article that defines the Felder-Silverman learning styles model, with a 2002 preface outlining and explaining changes that were later made in the model.
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  - What is known about the reliability and validity of the ILS?
    Three studies have examined the independence, reliability, and construct validity of the four instrument scales. The studies demonstrate that the ILS meets standard acceptability criteria for instruments of its type.
    1. R.M. Felder and J.E. Spurlin, “Applications, Reliability, and Validity of the Index of Learning Styles,” Intl. J. Engr. Education, 21(1), 103-112 (2005).
    2. M. Zywno, “A Contribution to Validation of Score Meaning for Felder-Soloman’s Index of Learning Styles,” Proceedings, 2003 ASEE Annual Conference, American Society for Engineering Education, June 2003.
    3. T.A. Litzinger, S.H. Lee, J.C. Wise, and R.M. Felder, “A Psychometric Study of the Index of Learning Styles,” J. Engr. Education, 96(4), 309-319 (2007).
    Adobe Acrobat Reader is needed to access these files. It can be downloaded free from www.adobe.com.
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  - May I build a link to the ILS on my web site?
    You are welcome to do so.
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  - May I use the ILS in my research?
    Yes. (See next question for information on how to cite it.)
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  - How should I cite the ILS or the short paper “Learning Styles and Strategies” if I refer to them in publications?
    If you use the ILS and/or publish anything related to the ILS or data obtained with it, please cite Felder, R.M., and Soloman, B.A. (n.d.) in the text and include the bibliographic listing
    Felder, R.M., and Soloman, B.A. (n.d.). Index of Learning Styles. Retrieved from <https://www.webtools.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/>.
    To reference “Learning Styles and Strategies,” cite Felder, R.M., and Soloman, B.A. (n.d.) in the text and include the bibliographic listing
    Felder, R.M., and Soloman, B.A. (n.d.). Learning styles and strategies. Retrieved from <https://www.engr.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/drive/1WPAfj3j5o5OuJMiHorJ-lv6fON1C8kCN/styles.pdf>.
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  - May I administer the ILS to my college students, employees, or clients?
  - May I get the scoring key for the questionnaire?
    The ILS is available at no cost to students and faculty at educational institutions to use for non-commercial purposes, and also to individuals who wish to determine their own learning styles. While I have chosen to provide open access to the web-based instrument, I rely on the integrity of other users to help cover the expense of maintaining it.
    If you are affiliated with an educational institution and wish to administer the ILS at no cost to your students, advisees, or educational research subjects, click here to access a certification form.
    If you are affiliated with an organization other than an educational institution or you are in business for yourself and wish to administer the ILS to your colleagues, employees, or clients, or if you are with an educational institution and wish to administer it to anyone for a fee, click here to get information about licensing.
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  - May I get copies of my students’ profiles when they complete the questionnaire on the Web?
    Sorry–the questionnaire is not set up to do that. If you wish to collect responses, you will either have to ask the respondents to print out and hand in their profiles or make arrangements to secure the scoring key or the computer code for the instrument under the terms outlined in the previous question.
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  - May I administer the ILS to my pre-college students? If not, then what can I administer to them?
    The ILS was developed for use by college students and has only been validated for people of college age and older. Obviously, the instrument can only provide meaningful results for subjects who understand questions like
    When I solve math problems
    (a) I usually work my way to the solutions one step at a time
    (b) I often just see the solutions but then have to struggle to figure out the steps to get to them
    and
    When I am learning a new subject, I prefer to
    (a) stay focused on that subject, learning as much about it as I can
    (b) try to make connections between that subject and related subjects
    Many older high school students might relate to those questions, but it would be a rare junior high school student and an even rarer elementary school student who could provide reliable answers. In short, the younger the student, the less appropriate the ILS.
    One assessment instrument that is normally used for pre-college students is the Murphy-Meisgeier Type Inventory, which is designed to assess Myers-Briggs Type Indicator preferences for children in Grades 2-8 (ages 7-13). It can be obtained from the Center for Applications of Psychological Type and other organizations that distribute the MBTI.
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  - What does it mean if I could have answered most of the questions either way?
    Imagine each dimension of the ILS as a two-pan scale, with each pan representing one of the two categories of the dimension (for example, sensing and intuiting), and weights in a pan representing skills associated with that category. If you have a preference for sensing, it means you have more weights in the sensing pan than the intuitive pan, and conversely if you have a preference for intuition.
    Some people have a strong preference for one category, say, sensing, over the other (they have many more weights in the sensing pan than in the intuitive pan). Those people will choose the sensing alternative on most of the 11 questions on the ILS that have to do with the sensing/intuitive dimension, and they will get a high score (9 or 11) for sensing. (The score is the difference between sensing responses and intuitive responses.) Others for whom the preference for sensing still exists but is not as strong will choose a few intuitive responses. They will get an intermediate score (5 or 7) for sensing. Still others who prefer sensing are closely balanced (nearly equal weights on both pans). In situations that call for behaving like a sensor or like an intuitor, they are almost equally likely to go either way. On the ILS, these individuals will end up choosing some sensing alternatives and almost as many intuitive alternatives and end up with a low score (1 or 3) for sensing. So, if you find that you have a hard time answering many questions that relate to a particular dimension, it just means that you are fairly well balanced on that dimension.
    It is important to remember that if you have a preference for one category it doesn’t mean anything about how strong or weak you are at the other category (or at the first category, for that matter). One person with a preference for sensing may not be particularly skilled at either sensing or intuition (few weights in the sensing pan, even fewer in the intuitive pan). Another may have many skills in both categories (many weights in the intuitive pan, even more in the sensing pan). Both of these individuals would look alike on the ILS.
    Since people must function well in each category to be successful in work and in life, the goal for teachers should be to help equip students with both skills associated with each category of each learning style dimension. For more information about how to do this, read “Reaching the Second Tier.”
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  - Why isn’t the inductive-deductive dimension of the original learning styles model assessed on the ILS?
    Since Linda Silverman and I developed the model on which the ILS is based, I have come to believe that while inductive and deductive are indeed different learning preferences and different teaching approaches, the “best” method of teaching–at least below the graduate school level–is inductive, whether it’s called problem-based learning, discovery learning, inquiry learning, or some variation on the same theme. On the other hand, the traditional college teaching method is deductive, starting with “fundamentals” and then proceeding to applications.
    The problem with inductive presentation is that it isn’t concise and prescriptive–you have to take a thorny problem or a collection of observations or data and try to make sense of it. Many or most students would say that they prefer deductive presentation, as in “Just tell me exactly what I need to know for the test, not one word more or less.” I don’t want instructors to be able to give our instrument to students, find that the students prefer deductive presentation, and use that result to justify continuing to use the traditional deductive instructional paradigm in their courses and curricula. I have therefore omitted this dimension from the model and the ILS.
    To view descriptions and comparisons of different inductive teaching methods with suggestions for implementing them effectively, click here.
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  - Why “visual-verbal” and not “visual-auditory-kinesthetic”?
    Visual and auditory learning both have to do with the component of the learning process in which information is perceived through the senses, while “kinesthetic” learning, being the only remaining category, lumps together both information perception (touching, tasting, smelling) and information processing (moving, interacting with others, etc.). The perception-related aspects of kinesthetic learning are at best marginally relevant to higher education and so are neglected in the learning styles model. The processing components of the kinesthetic modality are included in the active/reflective learning style category. The next question addresses the verbal-auditory distinction.
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  - Since we see written words, why are they not included in the visual category?
    “Visual” information clearly includes pictures, diagrams, charts, plots, animations, etc., and “auditory” information clearly includes spoken words and other sounds. The one medium of information transmission that is not clear is written prose. It is perceived visually and so obviously cannot be categorized as auditory, but it is also a mistake to lump it into the visual category as though it were equivalent to a picture in transmitting information. Cognitive scientists have established that our brains generally convert written words into their spoken equivalents and process them in the same way that they process spoken words. Written words are therefore not equivalent to real visual information: to a visual learner, a picture is truly worth a thousand words, whether they are spoken or written. Making the learning style pair visual and verbal solves this problem by permitting spoken and written words to be included in the same category (verbal).
    For more details about the cognition studies that led to this conclusion, see R.M.Felder and E.R. Henriques, “Learning and Teaching Styles in Foreign and Second Language Education.”
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  - Is there a teaching styles inventory that parallels the ILS?
    I don’t know of any. If teachers look at the list of recommended teaching strategies in “Learning and Teaching Styles in Engineering Education,” they should be able to judge the extent to which they are addressing the needs of students with different learning styles.
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  - Where can I find out more about the learning style dimensions assessed on the ILS?
    If you click here, you will find several articles that provide information on the Felder-Silverman learning styles model that forms the basis of the ILS.
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Resources for Teaching and Learning STEM

Rebecca Brent and Richard Felder's Website

Richard Felder’s Responses to Frequently Asked Questions about the ILS