Basic learning styles and the relationships to achievement in allied health and nursing

In allied health and nursing, the importance of finding the most effective and efficient styles of learning are of great importance because of the enormous amounts of information that students have to learn and retain in very short periods of time. Therefore, determining student learning styles and learning environments becomes a high priority. The purpose of this study was to determine the learning styles and preferred learning environments of allied health and nursing students. The relationships between learning styles student levels of achievement in didactic, scientific, and core courses were also studied. One instrument, the Gregorc's Learning Style Delineator, classifies subjects into four distinct learning styles: abstractrandom, concrete-sequential, abstract-sequential, and concreterandom. A second instrument, the Rahr Learning Environment Preference Instrument, designed by the author and modeled after an instrument used by Dunn, Dunn, and Price, identifies preferences students have for learning. In this study, learning styles and learning environment preferences of students in four allied health disciplines (occupational therapy, physical therapy, medical technology, and physician assistant) and in nursing were compared. Participants were junior and senior students enrolled at the School of Allied Health Sciences and the School of Nursing at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Texas. [...]