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Felder-Soloman's Index of Learning Styles: internal consistency, temporal stability, and factor structure
Charles C Hosford1, William A Siders
1Office of Medical Education, University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Grand Forks, North Dakota 58202, USA. chosford@medicine.nodak.edu
Teaching and Learning in Medicine
|October 12, 2010
Summary
The Index of Learning Styles (ILS) is appropriate for assessing medical student learning preferences, showing moderate reliability and supporting its use in medical education. This tool helps tailor educational strategies.
Area of Science:
- Medical Education
- Educational Psychology
Background:
- Facilitating student learning can be improved by understanding and utilizing learning style preferences.
- Informing students and educators about these preferences is a key strategy.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the factor structure, internal consistency, and temporal stability of the Index of Learning Styles (ILS) in medical students.
- To determine the appropriateness of the ILS as an assessment instrument in medical education.
Main Methods:
- The ILS measures preferences across four dimensions: sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal, active/reflective, and sequential/global.
- Medical students from 2002-2007 classes completed the ILS, with some re-testing at 2 and 4 years.
Main Results:
- Analysis confirmed the ILS's intended factor structure and demonstrated moderate reliability.
- Medical students exhibited moderate preferences for sensing and visual learning styles.
Conclusions:
- The Index of Learning Styles is a suitable instrument for assessing learning style preferences among medical students.
- Findings support the use of the ILS to inform pedagogical approaches in medical training.
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