Do learning styles influence learning outcomes in anatomy in first-year medical students?

Learning styles are a key element for teachers for any given learning environment. The Visual, Aural/Auditory, Reading/write, Kinesthetic (VARK) instrument is easy to administer and can have an impact on the quality of learning environment. The present study was done to understand the learning styles preferred by the students using VARK questionnaire and correlating learning styles with their academic performance.

The study was conducted on 100 first-year MBBS students. Students were categorized into five groups of learners: visual, auditory, read/write, kinesthetic, and multimodal, based on their scores obtained after administering VARK questionnaire. First internal marks of theory and practicals were collected. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was done in five groups of learning styles.

Out of 97, 13 were visual, 25 were auditory, 5 were read/write, 40 were kinesthetic, and 14 were multimodal type of learners. Three students were chronic absentees and were excluded from the study. The student who scored highest in theory internal assessment belonged to visual and kinesthetic type of learner, whereas who scored least was a kinesthetic learner. The student who scored highest in practical internal assessment was a multimodal learner and who scored least was a kinesthetic learner, The P value for theory was 0.773 and for practicals was 0.26, ANOVA for theory is 0.33 and for practicals is 0.057.

There was no statistic difference in theory performance, however with respect to practicals, the ANOVA value was 5%. Hence, the aforementioned results may be suggestive of correlation between learning style and academic performance.