Mupinga, D. M., Nora, R. T., & Yaw, D. C. (2006). The learning styles, expectations, and needs of online students. College Teaching, 54(1), 185-189.
In this reading...
The authors have identified one of the difficulties of teaching online as being the lack of familiarity with the learning styles of their student population. They suggest ways of surveying their audience to determine their preferred learning styles and to get a sense of what their students needed from the instructors and the course material to be successful.