Learning Style and Academic Performance of First Year Agricultural Undergraduates: A Case in Rajarata University of Sri Lanka

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.