Learning Style Preferences: A Comparison between Students of an Indian and a Malaysian Medical School.

Background: Students have different levels of motivation, attitudes about teaching-learning and responses to specific environments. The more the instructors understand the differences, better the chance they have of meeting the diverse learning needs of all their students. This study aims to analyze the learning preferences among students of an Indian and a Malaysian medical school. Methods: The study was conducted among the 2nd year medical students from an Indian medical school (group 1, n=91) and a Malaysian medical school (group 2, n=100). After obtaining informed consent, the students were instructed to fill ―the index of learning styles questionnaire‖ by Felder and Solomon. The questionnaire assesses preferences on four dimensions: processing (active/reflective), perception (sensing/intuitive), input (visual/verbal) and understanding (sequential/global). The data obtained was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: In group 1, 56 students were female and 35 male, and in group 2, 61 were female and 39 male. In both groups we found that active learners were common in processing, sensing learners in perception, visual in input and sequential in understanding. The comparison in the learning style between both groups revealed that active learners were more in group 2 (64%), reflective in group 1 (42%), sensing in group 2 (64%), intuitive in group 2 (37%), verbal in group 2 (26%), visual in group 1 (80%), sequential in group 2 (68%) and global in group 1(42%). Conclusion: It is recommended that educators take learning style preferences of medical students into consideration so that teaching-learning methods are designed to suit the learning styles of all or most of the students.

Survey on the Quality of Life in Patients with Bronchial Asthma in an Outpatient Clinic in Malaysia.

Introduction: Bronchial asthma is one of the common diseases encountered by the physicians which leads to morbidity and mortality. Therefore it is important to know the quality of life in these patients. So that necessary measures can be taken to improve it. Objectives: To assess the quality of life in patients with bronchial asthma. Methodology: This was a cross sectional study conducted at a private clinic in Malaysia. Data was collected from 40 asthmatic patients. They were administered the mini asthma quality of life questionnaire developed by Professor Elizabeth Juniper. The Questionnaire tests four domains which includes symptoms, activity limitation, emotional function and environmental stimuli. The mean scores of 1-3.9, 4-4.9 and ≥ 5 indicated severe, moderate, mild limitations in the quality of life respectively. The data was analyzed using SPSS software (Statistical package for the social sciences). Results: The mean age of the patients was 32.7±15 yrs. We found that 70% of the patients were females. 60% of the patients had severe impairment in the quality of life. In the symptoms, emotional function and environmental stimuli domains 70%, 65% and 75% of the patients respectively had severe impairment in the quality of life, whereas in the activity domain it was only 27.5%. Conclusion: We conclude that most of the patients had severe impairment in the quality of life. It was seen that there was least impairment in the activity domain. Larger studies with more sample size is required to strengthen our findings.