Relationship between Learning Styles and Academic Performance among Virtual Nursing Students: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background. The lack of attention of nursing professors to students' learning styles can cause academic failure. The results of studies on the relationship between students' learning style and academic achievement are contradictory. Therefore, this study was designed to investigate the relationship between VARK learning styles and academic performance among virtual nursing students. Methods. In this cross-sectional study, 237 virtual nursing students were enrolled by the convenience sampling method. The VARK learning styles questionnaire was used for data collection. The basis for determining academic performance was the grade point average(s) (GPA) of the previous semester(s). Students were divided into two groups based on their GPA, including strong (GPA ≥15) and weak (GPA ≤14.99) groups. Results. In both strong and weak groups, most of the subjects were unimodal (with a frequency of 92.9% and 78.5%, respectively), and the rest were multimodal. The most common learning styles in strong and weak students were kinesthetic (57.1%) and auditory (37.2%), respectively. The results of chi-square test did not show statistically significant differences between learning styles and academic performance of strong and weak students. Conclusion. There was no significant relationship between the dominant learning styles and academic performance of strong and weak students. However, nursing professors need to adapt their teaching methods to the students' learning styles. More studies are recommended to shed more light on this area of research.