Biannual Journal of Medical Education

Background and Objective: Choosing the right teaching method that improves the quality of education requires careful examination and diagnosis of learning styles. When it comes to knowledge acquisition, information processing, memory retention, and recall, students have unique preferences. This study was conducted with the aim of investigating the preferred learning styles of Babol dental students and investigating the effect of gender, academic semester and grade point average (GPA) of the previous semester.

Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study was conducted using the VARK learning styles questionnaire (Visual-Aural-Reading/Writing-Kinesthetic) on 165 students from the 5th to 12th semester who passed the basic science and were satisfied to participate. The data was analyzed with SPSS version 26 and CHI-SQUARE and ANOVA tests.

Findings: Among 165 students who responded to the questionnaires, 69.1% were tuition-free students and 30.9% were tuition-paying students. The most participants were from the 6th semester and the least from the 7th semester, and the average age was 24.05±3.64. The highest percentage of students had GPA between 16 and 18 in the previous semester ⅔ dental students are more partial to an unimodal learning style, among which the Aural and kinesthetic style was preferred. No significant relationship was found between students' GPA at the end of the semester, academic semester, gender and type of entry(tuition-free/ tuition-paying) with learning style.

Conclusion: The superiority of the unimodal learning style and the greatest preference for the auditory method without the influence of demographic variables on these styles can help professors choose a more effective educational method.