A Study to Assess Whether Medium of Instruction in School Does Affect the Learning Style Preferences of First Year Medical Students

ABSTRACT

Introduction: First-year medical students coming from different backgrounds and mediums of schooling have to cope up witha vast amount of information. Learning is influenced by the mode of input that has been presented to the students. They havedifferent learning styles and preferences as far as knowledge uptake is concerned. Visual, Auditory, Reading/Writing, andKinesthetic (VARK) are among the known modes of information presentation.Purpose: The present study was aimed at checking out if the medium of instruction in schools affected preference in learningstyles among the 1st-year medical students. This could be of help probably in providing customized instructive plans if required.Methods: In the present study, 116 1st-year medical students from Grant Government Medical College coming from differentmediums of instruction in school were included and categorized as English medium (EM) and Non-EM (NEM). The standardVARK questionnaire developed by Fleming was used in the study to assess their learning preferences.Results: No significant difference in learning style preference for both EM and NEM was found in either multimodal or unimodallearners. Further breakdown of the multimodal learners into modality combinations, i.e., bimodal, trimodal, and quadmodal, too,did not reveal any significant learning style difference among the different mediums.Conclusion: As no significant difference in learning style preference among students from different mediums were revealedin the present study, there seems to be no need of personalized teaching strategy differences for the students coming fromdifferent backgrounds and medium of instruction.