Sensory Modalities - An Aid towards Improved Class Room Teaching

Abstract

Aims: 1.To identify the learning styles of our first semester medical students based on their sensory modalities 2. To help us design a lesson plan that could address all the students. Study design: Descriptive Study. Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted during the community medicine lecture in August 2010 at Dr. Pinnamaneni Siddhartha Institute of Medical Sciences & Research Foundation, Chinnoutapalli, Krishna District, Andhra Pradesh, India. Methodology: We surveyed 150 first semester medical students in a descriptive study. The VARK (Visual, Auditory, Read/Write, and Kinesthetic) learning style standard questionnaire version 7.0 constituting 16 questions with instructions was administered as a hard copy to determine their preferred learning styles. The data was analyzed with the help of VARK – advice to the users of questionnaire and SPSS version 16. Results: Out of 150 students 130 (87%) completed the questionnaire. Single mode was preferred by 33.1%; out of which 1.5% had Visual, 14.6% had Auditory, 3.1% had Read/Write and 13.8% had Kinesthetic preference. The rest (66.9%) had multiple preferences; out of which 39.2% had bimodal, 20.8% had trimodal and 6.9% had quadmodal preferences. Of the students who preferred 2 modes of information presentation, 3.8% preferred visual and auditory, 0.8% preferred visual and read/write, 3.1% preferred visual and kinesthetic, 3.8% preferred auditory and read/write, 23.1% preferred auditory and kinesthetic, 4.6% preferred read/write and kinesthetic. Amongst the students who preferred 3 modes of information presentation, 2.3% preferred visual, auditory, read/write, 3.8% preferred visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, 3.8% preferred visual, read/write, kinesthetic, 10.8% preferred auditory, read/write, kinesthetic. Conclusion: Majority of the students were multimodal learners. Among the unimodal learners most of them were auditory. Teachers can plan the lesson accordingly to create a student friendly environment and can be more open for experimentation and have an innovative approach.