Motivating but Not Labelling the Students: A Qualitative Study on the Preferences of Learning Styles Among Undergraduate Medical Students

摘要

Every individual has his/her learning style preferences. A student should not be labelled as particular type of learner rather he/she may be empowered with the different learning style preferences, isual-aural-read/write-kinaesthetic (VARK) is a sixteen-item questionnaire which defines the preference of iarning based on sensory modalities.The aim of this study was to assess preferences in learning style among undergraduate medical tudents and to compare their relation to gender.Material: This was a descriptive cross-sectional questionnaire based study. Institute Ethics :ommittee approval and informed consent were obtained prior to start of this study. Preferred modes of earning of 300 undergraduate medical students were assessed by means of self-administered VARK uestionnaire. A p value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.Among 300 students, 172 (57%) were females and 128 (43%) were males. Nearly 228 (76%) had nimodal learning style and 72 (23.9%) preferred multimodal learning. Among unimodal learners, a majority 37%) were of auditory learners followed by kinaesthetic (25.3%). There was a significant difference (p<0.008) etween the learning style preferences among males and females.A majority of students had unimodal learng style. Male and female students differed ignificantly in their learning style preferences. Understanding different concepts of learning preferences and icorporation of appropriate unimodal and multimodal teaching methods will be beneficial in helping teachers l facilitating student's learning. This paves way for improving quality of teaching and learning attitudes mong medical professionals. Thus, a student should not be labelled as a particular type of learner rather e/she may be empowered with the different learning style preferences.