Learning Styles of Environmental Health and Nutrition Students in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Iran

The term learning style refers to the method one uses to obtain and use information to learn. The purpose of our study was to define the predominant learning styles of environmental health students (in the second and fourth semesters) and nutrition students (in the first-fourth semesters).

In this cross-sectional, analytical study, census sampling was used to select participants. The study population included environmental health students in the second and fourth semesters and nutrition students in the first-fourth semesters in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran. Learning styles of the students were assessed by Kolb's learning style inventory. We used descriptive statistics, chi-square test, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) to analyze the data in SPSS.

A total of 131 (29 male and 102 female) students completed the learning style inventory. Converging and assimilating learning styles were more common in female and male students, respectively. The frequency of diverging, accommodating, converging, and assimilating learning styles among the students of nutrition (n = 76) were 23.7%, 23.7%, 23.7%, and 28.9%, respectively. The predominant learning styles among environmental health students were accommodating (30.9%), diverging (29.1%), converging (23.6%), and assimilating (16.4%) styles.

Learning styles of students vary between different fields and places.