Study of VARK learning preferences in undergraduate health science students at Hetauda, Nepal

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Insights into individual learning styles that can inform more effective teaching strategies are provided by the VARK model, which categorizes learning preferences into four modalities: Visual, Aural, Read/Write, and Kinesthetic. This investigation was designed to evaluate the distribution of unimodal and multimodal learning patterns among undergraduate health science students at Madan Bhandari Academy of Health Sciences, Hetauda, Nepal, and to identify their learning preferences using the VARK model.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

A descriptive cross-sectional study with 142 students from four academic programs was carried out between January and April of 2025. Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25 was used for data analysis after the VARK questionnaire (version 8.01) was distributed. To investigate relationships between academic departments and learning styles, chi-square tests were used.

RESULTS

Multimodal learning preferences were present in most students (87.3%), with bimodal learning styles being the most common (44.4%), followed by trimodal (22.5%) and quadrimodal (20.4%). Kinesthetic learning predominated among the 12.7% who showed a unimodal preference. The modalities with the greatest average scores were kinesthetic and auditory. There was no statistically significant difference between academic department and learning style (p = 0.77).

CONCLUSION

Multimodal learning strategies were preferred by the majority of the students, especially kinesthetic ones. In order to improve educational outcomes, these findings highlight the necessity of a variety of teaching methodologies that accommodate different learning preferences.