Relationship between Learning Styles and Academic Performance in Medical Students at Jazan University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: A Cross-sectional Study

Background: Learning styles refer to the gathering, processing, interpreting, organizing, and thinking about information. Becoming aware of learning styles can help students to improve their academic performance. In this study, we aimed to investigate the learning style preferences of medical students at Jazan University and investigate the relationship between their learning styles and grade point average. We also investigated the relationships between learning styles and demographics. Materials and Methods: This was a cross sectional study with a representative sample. We asked 431 medical students from Jazan University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to fill out the pretested and pre validated Visual, Auditory, Read/Write, and Kinesthetic questionnaire developed by Neil Fleming. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 27. Results: Participants learning preferences showed that 215 students (49.9%) preferred a combination of solitary and group learning, whereas 186 (43.2%) preferred solitary learning and only 30 (7%) preferred group learning. There was a higher preference for kinesthetic learning (n = 230, 53.4%) among the participants compared with auditory (n = 213, 49.4%), read/write (n = 136, 31.6%), and visual (n = 157, 36.4%) styles. Out of the 159 participants, 37% preferred kinesthetic learning, which involves learning through experiments. Visual learning methods were significantly associated with age and academic class with preference to use diagrams and demonstrations in 202 (46.9%) of the participants. Conclusion: The study concludes that the participants show a higher preference for kinesthetic learning. Our results showed that high achievers differ in their perceived learning preferences from low achievers, and they tend to have more than one major learning preference; however, demographic data did not correlate with learning style preferences.