Learning styles may be classified into four major sensory
modalities – visual, auditory, read-write and kinesthetic, that one most
prefers to use when internalizing information. The purpose of the study was to
evaluate the preferred learning style modality and to assess whether there was
any difference in the learning style preferences among medical and allied
sciences students. Learning style preference was identified using the
Visual-Aural-Read/Write-Kinesthetic (VARK) online inventory tool developed by
Fleming. A total of 273 first-year students of various medical courses
(medical, dental, nursing and physiotherapy) completed a questionnaire that
consists of two sections: the first section of the questionnaire consists of
the demographic profile, medical science stream and preferred sensory modality
of instructions while the second section of the questionnaire composed of the
16 questions from the Fleming VARK inventory (7.1 version) and was used to
determine students’ assessed sensory modality preferences. Students were
classified as unimodal learners if they preferred only one sensory modality,
bimodal learners if they chose two, and trimodal learners if they preferred
three. The learning style of the students from various medical courses showed a
statistically significant difference in Preferred (p<0.001) and VARK
(p<0.0001) learning styles. Within the group, VARK's preferred sensory
modality was kinesthetic in students of first-year medical and allied sciences.
As per Preferred Sensory Mode, kinesthetic was the preferred mode in medical
(p<0.163) and nursing (p<0.0001) while auditory in dental (p<0.001) and
visual in physiotherapy (p=0.281) students, respectively. The most common
pattern was bimodal learning in students of various medical courses and
statistically significant in medical and nursing. Present findings suggest that
kinesthetic was the preferred learning style by both Preferred Sensory Modality
Preferences and the VARK inventory tool, and was found to be statistically
significant among the students of medical and allied sciences. The most common
pattern was bimodal learning, with two dominant styles. Understanding of
learning preferences of the students will help in the development of the most
effective teaching strategies and, additionally, help to overcome the tendency
of many educators to treat students in the medical and allied sciences in a similar
way, so improving student learning, retention, and motivation.
Author(s) Details
Manisha Sankhla
S.M.S. Medical College, Jaipur (Rajasthan), India.
Aparna Garg
Mahatma Gandhi Medical College & Hospital, Jaipur
(Rajasthan), India.
Please see the link:- https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/mria/v10/1210
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