2023, Volume 16, Issue 12, pp 1802 – 1807

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

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Authors and Affiliations

Corresponding Author: Adel Mohamed Aboregela, Department of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, University of Bisha, Bisha, Saudi Arabia. E-mail: aaboregela@ub.edu.sa

Abstract

Understanding 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 positive correlation between the learning modality and the auditory style (P < 0.001). Also, a negative correlation was identified between reading/writing versus kinesthetic and auditory versus visual learning styles (P = 0.001). However, no significant correlations were identified between grades or GPA and specific learning styles. It can be concluded that the integrated PBL-dependent curriculum adopted at the College of Medicine, University of Bisha, is a suitable teaching modality satisfying different learning styles, but continuous monitoring is crucial.

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About this article

PMC ID: 10994608
PubMed ID: 
DOI: 10.25122/jml-2023-0366

Article Publishing Date (print): 12 2023
Available Online: 

Journal information

ISSN Printing: 1844-122X
ISSN Online: 1844-3117
Journal Title: Journal of Medicine and Life

Copyright License: Open Access

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.


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