Abstract:
In Sri Lankan universities, lecturers are trained and requested to conduct learning style assessments
to design strategies for better educational environments. Even though, limited attention has been
acquired in the area of learning styles and academic performances, less literature is found related
to agricultural undergraduates. This study has attempted to investigate the learning styles of first
year agricultural undergraduates in one of the Sri Lankan universities. The objective was thereby,
to examine any association between learning styles and academic performances. A Cross sectional
survey was administered using a structured questionnaire consisting of the VARK learning style
tool. Results illustrated that most of the students have multimodal learning styles and, those styles
were independent from gender or their high school academic discipline pertaining to agriculture
or biology. Among these learning styles, kinesthetic style has gained a reasonable attention. The
study concluded no substantial association between learning styles and academic performances.
Availability of multimodal learning styles are suitable to use blended teaching aids such as
lectures, video and illustrations as well as to encourage students to take self-notes etc. Moreover,
facilitating each student to gain hand on experience can be used to enhance the learning. Finally,
this study can also be performed using some other available methods to avoid the biased errors
and to understand the learning styles in different angles.
