Assessment of learning style preferences utilising the VARK questionnaire

Abstract

Background- Medical students have a wide range of diversity in their learning preferences. So, educators need to be aware of different learning styles to effectively tailor instructional strategies and methods to cater to the students’ learning needs and support a conductive learning environment. Thus, the VARK [an acronym for visual (V), aural (A), read/write (R) and kinaesthetic (K)] instrument is a useful model to assess learning styles. The study has been conducted to identify learning style preference among students of MBBS first year.

Materials and methods- The study was a cross-sectional study. It has been conducted for 3 months at Dharanidhar medical College and hospital, Keonjhar, Odisha, India. Consent was obtained from the participants before initiation of the study. VARK questionnaire has been provided to the enrolled participants in the form of Google Forms. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the student’s preference for various VARK components

Results- Overall, 160 students participated in the study. Among all the participants, 90 students were male and rest 70 were female students. The study has shown that 54% of the students were fitted into multimodal learning, while other 46% were comfortable with unimodal learning. Read/write (29.1%) followed by Kinaesthetic (37.5%) were the most common learning style preferences. 

Conclusion- The results obtained from this study provide convincing evidence for educators to use a blended teaching approach to cater to different learning styles to promote learning. To attain the higher level of student learning process, it is important to identify the preferred learning style of students and use innovative, multimodal teaching methods to make the classroom