Learning Style Preferences of First Year Medical Students-A Single Institute Study

Educational researchers postulate that everyone has different learning style. There is a great deal of interest amongst educators in identifying whether learners are predominantly visual, auditory, read/write and kinaesthetic learners. Many of the factors can influence learning styles of students. Some of the important ones are age, gender, culture, creative thinking and knowledge of English. The learning style and gender influence on it are studied in the present study.

The objective of the study was to know the learning style preferences of first-year medical students and to find out the influence of gender on learning style preferences.

A total of 150 first-year medical students of Government medical college, Aurangabad, Maharashtra were included in the study. The visual, aural, write/read and kinaesthetic questionnaire was given to find out the learning styles of these students.

The questionnaire was completed by 77 females and 73 males. The response rate was 100%. It was observed that a total of 124 students preferred multimodal learning style. Only 26 students preferred a single sensory modality for information intake. The influence of gender on learning style was not statistically significant.

The present study concluded that the medical students preferred multimodal learning styles. There was no significant gender difference in the learning styles preferred.