The effect of personality and learning styles on individual and collaborative learning: Obtaining criteria for adaptation

The aim of this work is to obtain useful criteria for both individual adaptation and dynamic group formation in adaptive collaborative learning systems. We present the results obtained when analyzing data from students of Computer Science from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. We have considered their personality and intelligence, the way they group themselves and their results when working individually and collaboratively, in order to find out relationships between their features, the group composition and their achievements. In this context, we have found that some features related to the student personality, intelligence and learning styles (such as neuroticism, spatial abilities, openness to experience, or sensing learning style) seem to influence their performance. This information can be useful in scenarios of face-to-face learning, blended learning or e-learning. In the context of e-learning, we find this information particularly useful for two purposes. Firstly, it allows the detection of potential students or groups with risk to fail when trying to achieve academic objectives and, therefore, makes it possible to prevent them from failing, by offering them personalized assistance in advance. Secondly, specific grouping criteria can be set for dynamic group formation, trying to lead the students to successful collaborative experiences.