Background: Education in medical field puts a great pressure on young students. An improved understanding of the link between learning performance and approaches to learning can guide to the development of a more adapted approach to delivering coaching to medical students. This study was carried out to assess the learning modalities adopted by the medical students of the third year in Kannur Medical College.
Objective: To assess the preferred learning modalities of the medical students of Kannur Medical College.
Materials and Methods: It is a cross-sectional study carried out in a medical college of Kannur, Kerala, India. A total of 100 third-year medical undergraduates in a private medical college at Kannur were asked to fill a pretested and prevalidated visual, auditory, read/write, kinaesthetic questionnaire, version 7.3 developed by Neil Fleming. The students were then scored to assess the predominant learning modality used. Data were analyzed using SPSS, version 20. Descriptive statistics and FisherÂ’s test were used to study the variables.
Result: Majority of the students were multimodal (69%). Reading/writing was the predominant modality used. There was no significant difference in the learning modalities of male and female students. There was also no difference in academic performance of uni- and multimodal learners.
Conclusion: Current teaching styles do not support the student fraternity that is predominantly multimodal. A variety of training programs must be arranged to train teachers to adjust their teaching styles. Multiple methods must be used simultaneously deliver knowledge and information to the students to improve their acceptance.
Key words: Learning preferences, medical students, visual, auditory, read/write kinaesthetic, multimodal, unimodal
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