Ojeh Nkemcho, Sobers-Grannum Natasha, Gaur Uma, Udupa Alaya, Majumder Md Anwarul Azim
Faculty of Medical Sciences, The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Bridgetown, Barbados, West Indies.
J Adv Med Educ Prof. 2017 Oct;5(4):185-194.
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. The VARK [an acronym for visual (V), aural (A), read/write (R) and kinesthetic (K)] instrument is a useful model to assess learning styles. The aim of this study was to use the VARK questionnaire to determine the learning styles of pre-clinical medical students in order to compare the perceived and assessed learning style preferences, assess gender differences in learning style preferences, and determine whether any relationships exists between awareness of learning styles and academic grades, age, gender and learning modality.
The VARK questionnaire was administered to pre-clinical students taking a variety of courses in the first three years of the undergraduate MB BS degree programme at the Faculty of Medical Sciences, The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados in 2014.
The majority of the students were multimodal learners with no differences observed between males (59.5%) and females (60.0%), with tetramodal being the most common. Read/write (33.8%) followed by kinesthetic (32.5%) were the most common learning style preferences. The sensory modality preference for females was read/write (34.2%) and for males it was kinesthetic (40.5%). Significant differences were observed between the perceived and assessed learning style preferences with a majority of visual and read/write learners correctly matching their perceived to their actual learning styles. Awareness of learning styles was associated with learning modality but not with academic performance, age or gender. Overall, 60.7% of high achievers used multimodal learning compared to 56.9% low achievers.
The findings from this study indicated that the VARK tool was useful in gathering information about different learning styles, and might assist educators in designing blended teaching strategies to cater to the students' needs as well as help the students in becoming aware of their learning style preferences to enhance learning.
教育工作者需要了解不同的学习风格，以便有效地调整教学策略和方法，满足学生的学习需求，并营造有利的学习环境。VARK（视觉（V）、听觉（A）、读写（R）和动觉（K）的首字母缩写）工具是一种评估学习风格的有用模型。本研究的目的是使用VARK问卷来确定临床前医学生的学习风格，以比较感知到的和评估出的学习风格偏好，评估学习风格偏好中的性别差异，并确定学习风格意识与学业成绩、年龄、性别和学习方式之间是否存在任何关系。
2014年，对在巴巴多斯西印度群岛大学凯夫希尔校区医学科学院攻读本科医学学士课程前三年各种课程的临床前学生进行了VARK问卷调查。
大多数学生是多模态学习者，男性（59.5%）和女性（60.0%）之间没有观察到差异，四模态是最常见的。读写（33.8%）其次是动觉（32.5%）是最常见的学习风格偏好。女性的感官模态偏好是读写（34.2%），男性是动觉（40.5%）。在感知到的和评估出的学习风格偏好之间观察到显著差异，大多数视觉和读写学习者正确地将他们感知到的与实际学习风格相匹配。学习风格意识与学习方式相关，但与学业成绩、年龄或性别无关。总体而言，60.7%的成绩优异者使用多模态学习，而成绩较差者为56.9%。
本研究结果表明，VARK工具在收集有关不同学习风格的信息方面很有用，并可能有助于教育工作者设计混合教学策略以满足学生的需求，同时帮助学生了解自己的学习风格偏好以提高学习效果。
