Learning styles of students of Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences in 2012

Understanding the learning styles of students may help educational planning and improve the learning. This study aims to assess learning styles, and relevant determinants, of students who study in various disciplines of medical sciences at Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences (BUMS) in 2012.

In this cross-sectional study, 180 students from BUMS were selected randomly. Data were collected sing the Kolb learning style questionnaire during April/May 2012. One-way ANOVA, Student t-test, Chi-square or Fisher exact tests were used for analyzing the data.

The mean age of participants was 29.3±7.0, majority of them were males. The preferred learning styles were diverger (76.7%), accommodator (12.8%), assimilator (7.8%) and converger (2.8%) respectively. The results showed that the factors such as age, sex, marriage status, father and mother education, grade point average (GPA) and academic degree could be important to determine learning style characteristics of students. The findings also indicate that the preferred learning style among the students with different GPAs or academic degrees are not different considerably.

Regarding the most preferred leaning style by the, proper planning to address proper teaching styles according to the preferred learning styles is necessary.