Learning style preference and the academic achievements of medical students in an integrated curriculum

J Med Life. 2023 Dec;16(12):1802-1807. doi: 10.25122/jml-2023-0366.ABSTRACTUnderstanding how individuals learn best, known as learning style, is integral to optimizing educational outcomes. This analytical study was conducted among students in their fourth year who finalized their problem-based activities at the College of Medicine, University of Bisha, Saudi Arabia. The visual, aural, read/write, and kinesthetic (VARK) model was adopted to assess individual differences in learning preferences and their correlation with academic achievement in the problem-based learning (PBL)-dependent curriculum. The online self-administered survey was completed by 64 students with a response rate of 79%. Of these, 63.5% were men and 36.5% were women, with a mean age of 21.9 years and a grade point average (GPA) of 3.83. Analysis of learning style distribution revealed that 34.9% preferred visual, 54% preferred auditory, 17.5% preferred read/write, and 90.5% preferred kinesthetic styles. Also, combined learning modalities revealed that 14.3% preferred unimodal, 74.6% bimodal, and 11.1% trimodal approaches. The most frequent unimodal approach was kinesthetic, while auditory/kinesthetic and visual/auditory/kinesthetic were the predominant bimodal and trimodal preferences. No significant differences in GPA were found among students with different selective learning styles or combined learning modalities, as determined by one-way ANOVA and chi-square tests. Spearman's rho correlation revealed a ...
Source: Journal of Medicine and Life - Category: General Medicine Authors: Source Type: research