Learning styles of medical students from a university in China

BACKGROUND: Investigating students’ learning styles can generate useful information that can improve curriculum design. This study adopts diverse measures to identify the learning styles of students despite limited literature related to clinical medical students in China. We utilized Felder’s Index of Learning Styles to examine the learning style characteristics of clinical medical students at Inner Mongolia Minzu University. METHODS: Cluster sampling (probability sampling) was used. This cross-sectional study investigated clinical medicine students with regard to their learning style preference and the difference across genders. This study also analysed data collected from other published studies. A total of 411 students from the medical school at Inner Mongolia Minzu University completed the Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire. The questionnaire assessed the learning styles of students in four dimensions: visual-verbal learning, sequential-global learning, active-reflective leaning, and sensing-intuitive learning. RESULTS: The analysis results show that clinical medicine students choose to receive visual information (73.97% of the student sample) instead of verbal information. These students prioritize sensory information (67.15%) rather than intuitive information and process reflective information (51.82%) rather than active information. They prefer to process information sequentially (59.85%) instead of globally. Our results also show that male students present a higher preference for an active learning style over a reflective learning style, while female students seem to present a higher preference for a reflective learning style over an active learning style. These preferences vary between cohorts (gender), but the difference is not statistically significant. Compared to data collected from other published studies, active, visual, sensing, and sequential are the most popular styles of learning adopted by medical science students. CONCLUSIONS: The identification of medical students’ learning style in China provides information that medical educators and others can use to make informed choices about modification, development and strengthening of medical educational programs. Our outcomes may potentially improve motivation, engagement and deep learning in medical education when used as a supplement to teaching/learning activities.