Learning styles, approaches and academic performance of second and third-year medical students of a medical college of Kathmandu: a descriptive cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background: The research is based on a questionnaire to study the different learning styles among medical students, and their approach to intellectual development. Methods: This is an observational, cross-sectional study conducted on 140 participants. Initially after the informed consent process, the second-year and third-year medical students were requested to respond to the questionnaire without consulting friends. Data were analyzed descriptively and comparison was made. Results: In this study, the students were mostly visual learners, followed by solo learners, audio learners, verbal learners, and social learners. The majority of the students in our study (84.56%) studied less than 4 h per day beyond normal lecture hours. Similarly, 45.71% of students studied continuously for 30–60 min. During break, 63.57% of students used social media, watched television, and videos, and listened to music. Most students (75%) preferred to study in a hostel room and only 12.85% used the library as their study place. The majority of the students (65.71%) of students slept between six to eight hours. The University’s suggested medical textbooks and reference materials were consulted by 94.3% of the students. The 47.85% of students favored self-directed learning with 56.42% preferring to read and write to retain the learned materials. Self-prepared notes were commonly used by the majority of students (60.7%). Conclusions: This research evaluates the preferred learning preferences of medical students and their relationship to academic performance, which will improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning between teachers and medical students.