Investigating the Effects of Cognitive Style on the Motivation of Students Enrolled in a Team-Based Learning Formatted Agricultural Mechanics Course at Louisiana State University

Educators have a plethora of teaching methods that allow them to tailor the learning environment to meet students’ needs. One novel instructional approach that has grown in popularity in U.S. higher education has been the flipped classroom approach, which has become a popular way to embrace a student-centered learning environment. Of the various types of flipped classrooms, team-based learning allows students to learn content outside of classroom time and spend more time doing hands-on activities as a team in a laboratory environment. This study aimed to describe the effect of cognitive style on the motivation of undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory agricultural mechanics course at Louisiana State University. Descriptive statistics, including means, frequencies, and standard deviations, were utilized to test the hypothesis and gain a holistic understanding of the data. We also conducted a Mann-Whitney U test to determine if a statistically significant difference existed between motivation and cognitive style. No statistically significant differences were found between cognitive style and motivation. However, the more innovative students in this investigation had higher motivation scores than those identified as more adaptive.