Learning Style Preferences among UNITEN it Students: Analysis of Gender and Ethnicity

Understanding learning style preference in order to improve teaching and learning experience at tertiary education institutions is considered vital nowadays. Numerous studies have been conducted within learning styles context to find factors that contribute to a better learning environment. By knowing students’ learning preferences, the course instructor can assimilate necessary course delivery methods which best suit students’ learning style preferences, thus enhancing their learning experience. In this research, we target to study the variation of learning styles preference and its relationship with gender and ethnicity among College of Information Technology students in Uniten. 102 students participated in this study with a percentage of 46% being female students and 54% being male students. They were asked to complete the Visual Auditory Kinesthetic (VAK) learning style self-assessment paper-based questionnaire. Based on the assessed learning styles, 91% preferred unimodal learning style and 9% preferred multi modal learning style. Descriptive statistics were used to evaluate learning styles variation while Chi Squared Test was used to test the relationship between learning style preference with gender and ethnicity. From the analysis, it was found that there is a significant relationship between learning style preference and gender (χ²= 11.4, p=0.044). However, there is no significant relationship between learning style preference and ethnicity (χ²= 9.86, p=0.453).