Assessment of postgraduate international students learning preferences at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Knowledge of learning preference can help to improve learning and teaching process and understand its implications. The aim of this study was to assess the preference for taking in and putting out information in learning among postgraduate international students at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Using Institutional based cross-sectional descriptive study and self administrated structured version 7.2, visual, auditory, read/write, and kinesthetic and multimodal learners (VARK) questionnaire was used. The questionnaire was divided into two sections including (a) demographic profile and (b) sixteen multiple choice questions. Data was collected from 40 participants who were selected by purposive method. After coding and cleaning, data was entered and analyzed by SPSS version 21 and Microsoft excel using the VARK guidelines. Descriptive statistics was used to see the frequency and percentage of each variable. The p-value< 0.05 was significance measurement for the result in this study. A total of 40 postgraduate international medical science students; the majority 8 (20%) were females and 32 (80%) of respondents were male. The most frequent unimodal learning preferences was read/write (32.5%). In addition, aural (27.5%), visual (20%) and kinesthetic (17.5%) were in the next order in learning preference of students. The mean scores of male students who preferred both bimodal learning and trimodal learning was 63.75 whereas in female participants it was 58.69. In conclusion, the mean scores of both bimodal and trimodal learning preferences were equal. However, the mean scores and standard deviation of quadrimodal learning preferences were lower than both bimodal and trimodal. Therefore, further study is necessary to fill this gap.