The relationship between learning preferences (styles and approaches) and learning outcomes among pre-clinical undergraduate medical students

Background Learning styles and approaches of individual undergraduate medical students vary considerably and as a consequence, their learning needs also differ from one student to another. This study was conducted to identify different learning styles and approaches of pre-clinical, undergraduate medical students and also to determine the relationships of learning preferences with performances in the summative examinations. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted among randomly selected 419 pre-clinical, undergraduate medical students of the International Medical University (IMU) in Kuala Lumpur. The number of students from Year 2 was 217 while that from Year 3 was 202. The Visual, Auditory, Read/Write, Kinesthetic (VARK) and the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) questionnaires were used for data collection. Results This study revealed that 343 students (81.9%) had unimodal learning style, while the remaining 76 (18.1%) used a multimodal learning style. Among the unimodal learners, a majority (30.1%) were of Kinesthetic (K) type. Among the middle and high achievers in summative examinations, a majority had unimodal (Kinaesthetic) learning style (30.5%) and were also strategic/deep learners (79.4%). However, the learning styles and approaches did not contribute significantly towards the learning outcomes in summative examinations. Conclusions A majority of the students in this study had Unimodal (Kinesthetic) learning style. The learning preferences (styles and approaches) did not contribute significantly to the learning outcomes. Future work to re-assess the viability of these learning preferences (styles and approaches) after the incorporation of teaching-learning instructions tailored specifically to the students will be beneficial to help medical teachers in facilitating students to become more capable learners.