Learning style preferences and academic success of preclinical allied health students

Student learning style modality preferences, in preclinical classes, were assessed using the visual-aural-read/write-kinesthetic (VARK) inventory. Preferences were assessed for 137 preclinical students, including those in nursing, physician's assistant, physical therapy, athletic training, and natural science programs using the online VARK inventory. All classes contained a majority of multimodal and a significantly high proportion of kinesthetic learners. No correlations were noted between modality preference strength and assessment performance in general biology classes; significant correlations were discovered for kinesthetic preference among the same cohort in subsequent human anatomy (negative correlation) and general physiology (positive correlation) classes. Assessment performance of nursing students in an anatomy and physiology class resulted in correlations with aural (negative correlation) and visual (positive correlation) preference strengths. Study findings are used to evaluate the efficacy of non-omnimodal delivery of content-focused science classes, before the students have developed the background knowledge or skills required to contextualize the learning.