Learning style preference of undergraduate medical students: A VARK Analysis

Physiology 2015 (Cardiff, UK) (2015) Proc Physiol Soc 34, PC042

Poster Communications: Learning style preference of undergraduate medical students: A VARK Analysis

T. Alam1, S. Rahman1, M. Haque2, N. Alam2, T. Alam3

1. Faculty of Medicine, AIMST University, Bedong, Kedah, Malaysia. 2. Holy Family Red Crescent Medical College, Dhaka, Bangladesh. 3. Northern University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

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Modern education should aim to assist the mind to think rather than just packing it up. Individualism in learning methods remains a major pedagogic concern for the academicians yet today. Additionally, the trainees’ own forte and flaw also adjunct in learning process, significantly. We therefore assessed students’ preference following sensory modalities of learning approach using visual, aural, read/write and kinesthetic (VARK) questionnaire. Moreover, to figure out any significant variations in such preference affected by variables like, genders or study years. The qualitative study was conducted among the undergraduates of Holy Family Red Crescent Medical College (HFRCMC), Bangladesh in December 2014. This was a descriptive, cross-sectional, questionnaire based survey where the year 1 and year 2 medical students were included. Ethical approval was obtained from institution ethics committee. Consented participants were informed about nature and outcome of the study in detail. The 16 item VARK 7.8 version (1) was employed to collect the data from respondents including certain socio-demographic information. Copyright permission was granted from the VARK developers. The stepping stone method (2) was applied to comment on the respondent’s particular preference. While mean was calculated for quantitative variables, frequencies were determined for qualitative data, which were then analyzed with Pearson’s Chi square and ANOVA. Value of p<0.05 was considered as significant while analyzing the data using SPSS v. 16. Out of 180 respondent 141 female and 123 were from year 1. The responses were tallied and assessed for gender and level of study according to learning style preference. More than half (55.6%) of the participants were found to have multimode learning preferences, in rank order as quad-modal (n=47), bimodal (n=30), tri-modal (n=23). The hierarchy of single mode preferences (44.4%) were as 46 aural, 26 kinesthetic, 5 visual followed by 3 read/write. No significant association was existed in sensory preferences with gender, academic background or year of study. It became evident from this study, that majority of HFRCMC undergraduates preferred multimodal learning strategies. This is remains the pioneer study of its kind and rarely reported from this region indicating medical teachers to assort their presentation style to help out the medicos towards productive education. Hence, re-designing instructional methods in accordance with students’ inclination demand to be tailored further to potentiate learning.



Where applicable, experiments conform with Society ethical requirements.

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