The relationship between learning preferences (styles and approaches) and learning outcomes among pre-clinical undergraduate medical students

BMC Medical Education

Ankur Barua¹  Jagmohni Sidhu²  Siaw-Cheok Liew² 

[1]Department of Community Medicine, International Medical University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

[2]Department of Clinical Skills and Simulation Centre, International Medical University, No. 126, Jalan Jalil Perkasa 19, Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur, 57000, Malaysia

关键词: Students;    Medical;    Vark;    Assist;    Approach;    Styles;    Learning;   

Others  :  1206384
DOI  :  10.1186/s12909-015-0327-0

 received in 2014-08-01, accepted in 2015-02-25,  发布年份 2015

【 摘 要 】

Background

Learning styles and approaches of individual undergraduate medical students vary considerably and as a consequence, their learning needs also differ from one student to another. This study was conducted to identify different learning styles and approaches of pre-clinical, undergraduate medical students and also to determine the relationships of learning preferences with performances in the summative examinations.

Methods

A cross-sectional study was conducted among randomly selected 419 pre-clinical, undergraduate medical students of the International Medical University (IMU) in Kuala Lumpur. The number of students from Year 2 was 217 while that from Year 3 was 202. The Visual, Auditory, Read/Write, Kinesthetic (VARK) and the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) questionnaires were used for data collection.

Results

This study revealed that 343 students (81.9%) had unimodal learning style, while the remaining 76 (18.1%) used a multimodal learning style. Among the unimodal learners, a majority (30.1%) were of Kinesthetic (K) type. Among the middle and high achievers in summative examinations, a majority had unimodal (Kinaesthetic) learning style (30.5%) and were also strategic/deep learners (79.4%). However, the learning styles and approaches did not contribute significantly towards the learning outcomes in summative examinations.

Conclusions

A majority of the students in this study had Unimodal (Kinesthetic) learning style. The learning preferences (styles and approaches) did not contribute significantly to the learning outcomes. Future work to re-assess the viability of these learning preferences (styles and approaches) after the incorporation of teaching-learning instructions tailored specifically to the students will be beneficial to help medical teachers in facilitating students to become more capable learners.

【 授权许可】

   
2015 Liew et al.; licensee BioMed Central.

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