Improving inventory learning style

OBJECTIVE: To look into Vermunt learning style inventory as an example of other inventories, identify the students learning style, their experience when they answered the inventory, did it help them to identify their learning style, and how it can be improved.

METHODS: Quantitative questionnaire, and qualitative semi structured interviews at King Abdulaziz Medical City, King Fahad National Guard Hospital, Department of Obstetrics and gynecology, from November to December 2006 were recorded.

RESULTS: The quantitative comparison between the 17 studied students inventories revealed no significant difference between the students learning styles. In the interviews, the common themes were long questionnaire with frequency of 15/17, time consuming questionnaire 15/17, boring questionnaire 10/17, and agreement with the learning style identified 12/17.

CONCLUSION: Inventory learning style questionnaires are in general time-consuming and boring to the students. They are overlapping and using different terminologies for the same meaning. A collaborative work aiming to unify all the terms and reduce the length of the questionnaire is required. We should take into consideration motivation, cultural variations and emotional factors. This will allow more reliable results, better counselling to the students, perform systematic reviews, and enrich the literature with valuable information with avoidance of wasting time and efforts.