Assessing individual learning styles of undergraduate medical students utilizing Kolb’s learning style inventory

Abstract

Background & Objective: David A. Kolb, an educational theorist, proposes that learning is a process, and that experience plays a key role in how individuals learn. In his Experiential Learning Theory, he has introduced a Learning Style Inventory, as a tool to assess and categorize individuals based on their preferred ways of learning. Our objective was to assess the individual learning styles of undergraduate medical students based on Kolb’s learning style inventory (KLSI).

Methodology: In this cross sectional observational study a total of 142 medical students of 1st, 2nd and 3rd year MBBS, of a private Medical College, Rawalpindi were included through convenient sampling. After ethical approval study was conducted from March – August 2024. Kolb’s inventory was converted to google form and disseminated to students after, informed consent and allocating secret code to all. Responses received, were retrieved as excel sheets and also entered to SPSS software version 26. Individual students’ responses were plotted on Excel spread sheet graphs to attain the kite shapes, determining the learning style of each student. The study duration was from March - December 2024.

Results: The highest learning style amongst students was observed to be converging. However, when analyzed via chi square test, no significant difference was observed either between the students of the three years or between the learning styles of pre and post clinical students. There was transitory pattern of learning style preference among the 02 pre-clinical years of 1st and 2nd years.

Conclusion: It was concluded that learners exhibit different learning style preferences, that if known to the learner and facilitators would be helpful in the process.