Learning styles preferences of pre-clinical medical students in basic medical science subjects

Pre- clinical year medical students are exposed to diverse methods of teaching and learning. Different students employ different learning styles during their medical education. Therefore, understanding students’ learning style preference is an important attention for a high quality and effective teaching and learning process. The aim of the study was to assess the variation of learning styles among pre-clinical year medical students in National Defence University of Malaysia (NDUM), Malaysia. A cross sectional study was performed by using self-administered questionnaires including VARK (Visual, Audio, Reading and Kinesthetic) to assess the learning style preference. The participants of 90 (n=90) pre-clinical students were included in this study. Descriptive statistics was used to identify the learning styles of the students. More than half of the students preferred multimodal as their learning style. In addition, the female students had more diverse preferences than male students. In our study, majority of students had chosen multimodal as their learning style preferences. The results of this study can provide certain extents of information to improve the teaching and learning methodology. We need further study including other medical schools to combine the
data of their learning styles to enhance the quality of medical education and learning experiences of pre-medical students in basic medical science subjects.