Learning style preferences of Australian occupational therapy students

Abstract

Background/aim: The learning styles and teaching implications for nursing and health science students have been well researched in other countries. Less research has considered the learning styles and implications for occupational therapy students. The current study examines the learning styles of occupational therapy students at one Australian university. Methods: The learning style preferences of first year undergraduate occupational therapy students (n = 120) were investigated. The students completed the Kolb Learning Style Inventory (LSI) and Fleming's VARK (Visual, Aural, Read/Write, and Kinaesthetic) Questionnaire in the first weeks of their course. Results: The response rate was 97% (n = 116). Learning style preferences as determined by the Kolb LSI were spread over all four Kolb LSI learning styles with 'diverging ' (30.2%) and 'converging' (28.4%) being the most preferred. Instructional preference as measured by the VARK Questionnaire was kinaesthetic learning (33%), followed by the multimodal preference VARK (18.1%). Visual and aural categories were these students' least preferred methods of learning. Conclusions:The results of the current study support previous research indicating a range of teaching methods should be utilised to accommodate for the variability of students' learning styles within educational programs. To accommodate the range of learning experiences encountered in fieldwork and later in professional practice, students need to strengthen their capacities to use a variety of learning styles. This paper proposes that student learning for evidencedbased practice be facilitated by a range of learning opportunities including practical experiences.

A Cross‐Cultural Comparison of East Asian and American Higher Education Criminal Justice Student Learning Preferences Using the VARK Questionnaire

“…Kalkan (2008) used the VARK Questionnaire in a Turkish study of student learning preferences. French, Cosgriff, and Brown (2007) used the VARK Questionnaire and Kolb's Learning Styles Inventory in their study, the learning preferences of Australian occupational therapy students. Wehrwein, Lujan, and DiCarlo (2007) used the VARK Questionnaire to study the learning preferences of American physiology students.…”

Does learning style influence academic performance in different forms of assessment?

“…French et al. () in Australia found that the greatest percentage of occupational therapists were divergers, and in the USA, Romanelli et al. () found that pharmacists were more commonly accommodators.…”

The sensory modality used for learning affects grades

“…Because wording in Spanish has different meanings among different Latin American countries, the Spanish version of the VARK questionnaire that is available at Fleming's website (9a) was not used here, and a new translation was done by the author. This translation was tested for meaning comprehension before being applied to the students in the present study.The majority of VARK studies of students from different health-related careers have described the different learning style distributions between sex and/or unimodal versus multimodal proportions of the four sensory modalities (1,2,4,11,16,19,21). Only few and very recent studies have focused on the possible relation between the preferred sensory modality used for learning and student academic performance ( 3, 6 -8, 10).…”

“…The majority of VARK studies of students from different health-related careers have described the different learning style distributions between sex and/or unimodal versus multimodal proportions of the four sensory modalities (1,2,4,11,16,19,21). Only few and very recent studies have focused on the possible relation between the preferred sensory modality used for learning and student academic performance ( 3, 6 -8, 10).…”