Three Learning Tasks Delivered to a Wide Range of Student Learning Styles: What Combination & Sequence Helped the Students to Understand the Core Material and Fulfil Defined Learning Objectives?

In addition to the transferable skills necessary for success in any professional discipline, the study of advertising requires students to develop both Left hemisphere logical/critical skills as well as Right hemisphere spatial/visual skills. This research project exposed students with a wide range of different learning tasks in an effort to determine which tasks (or which combination and sequence of tasks) helped first-year advertising students to understand core material and to fulfil defined Learning Objectives. It was found that the two most significant factors in students‟ ability to succeed were i) attendance is scheduled sessions and ii), the number of UCAS points with which they were admitted to the programme. These findings are consistent with those reported by Schwartz (2004) that “Prior educational attainment data remains the best single indicator of success at undergraduate level”. The implications of the clear link established between students‟ UCAS points and the ability to fulfil the defined Learning Objectives remains a source of concern for the programme team because, in the past three years (2008-09, 2009-10, and 2010-11) the proportion of students admitted to the programme with the minimum number of UCAS points required for entry has steadily decreased.