Adult Learning Styles:
How the VARK©learning style inventory can be used to improve student learning.
Vanessa Marcy, MMSc,PA-C

Marcy. V.(2001), “Adult Learning Styles: How the VARK©learning style inventory can be used to improvestudent learning.”Perspective on Physician Assistant Education, Journal of the Association of Physician
Assistant Programs Vol 12, No 2, Spring 2001.
Abstract:
Students have different learning styles and these can affect how they learn. PA programs canpotentially improve student learning by administering an intervention such as learning style inventories.
The VARK© inventory is one such tool that is easy to use and can give students information on how tomaximize their learning. First-year Emory University Physician Assistant students were asked to take theVARK© inventory and then submit their results. This was followed with a presentation and discussion. Inaddition, these students were asked to respond to a questionnaire. The students had a positive response tothe intervention, and found it to be helpful. The use of learning style inventories appears to be beneficialand their usefulness should be further evaluated.

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Introduction:
This article looks at the need to acknowledge that students have different learning styles andproposes that Physician Assistant (PA) student education can be maximized when these learning styles are
acknowledged and integrated into their study habits. The make-up of a PA class is one that is diverse withstudents’ possessing different needs when it comes to learning. PA educators can greatly facilitate thelearning curve of their students when they recognize that adults learn differently than other students andthat tools such as learning style inventories can be used to help students recognize their strengths andweaknesses. The VARK© inventory (Figure 1) is one such assessment tool that is evaluated in this article.
The VARK© inventory was administered to the first year PA students at the Emory University PA
program. It was then evaluated for its usefulness by providing a lecture and administering a questionnaireasking the students how helpful they found the information. Students responded positively to learning about
the VARK© inventory. They showed great enthusiasm when asked if they would incorporate theirnewfound information into their study habits.
Background:
Dr. Malcolm Knowles’ theory about adult learning is widely accepted and is based on theprinciple that learning should be “learner-centered”. As adults learn, they move from a dependent state to
one that is more self-directed. Recognizing that adults have a wealth of life experiences that they can draw
from, Knowles stated that newly acquired information is integrated into these past experiences and serves
as the driving force in the learner’s desire to learn. Educators need to facilitate adult learning by actively
involving the learner in the education process. Adult learners are highly self-directed and, therefore, learn
best when they are active participants in the education process and are not forced to just listen to lectures 1.
Professor Lion Gardiner believes that a student’s active involvement in learning is so interrelated toeffective learning that educational institutions should focus on increasing its students’ involvement inlearning 2. In addition, adult learners are motivated to learn when they feel that the material has relevance toreal life or is somehow important to their life. Educators need to emphasize the goals of the courses theyare teaching because adults function best when they know what is expected of them. Also, it is importantfor educators to clearly state why the information being taught is important and how it fits into the bigger
picture of the education goals. Finally, educators need to show respect toward their students. When
students feel like equals to the educator they are more likely to participate in class and become active
learners. It is also important to recognize that adult learners tend to personalize mistakes that they make andthis may affect their self-esteem. It is for this reason that adult learners tend to be more reluctant when it
comes to participating in class. If they feel like an equal to the instructor, mistakes tend to be taken lesspersonally. One way to encourage students’ active involvement in their education is to give them tools to
help them become better learners regardless of the setting in which they are learning. One tool that can beused to facilitate this is a learning style inventory 3, 4.
Learning styles is a term used to refer to the methods of gathering, processing, interpreting,organizing and thinking about information. Students have different learning styles, which is the reason forthe diversity seen in classrooms in regards to how students acquire information. There have been various
models developed to explain different learning styles. These models can be broken down into four generalcategories according to researchers Claxton and Murrell. They divide the learning styles into the following:
personality models, information-processing models, social-interaction models, and instructional preferencesmodels. The personality models examine a person’s personality characteristics such as introversion vs.
extroversion. This gives the student information on how they are likely to react to information andsituations. The information-processing models focus on how students take in and process information. It
determines, for example, if the person learns in a serial manner or by looking at the whole concept. The
social-interaction models determine how a student reacts and behaves in the classroom. This model, forexample, can be used to determine if a student is motivated by grades or by interest in material content.
Finally, the instructional preferences models differentiate students by the way in which they best acquire
information. For example, does the student learn best by listening, reading, visualizing or experiencing 5?
There are numerous learning style inventories available, but this article specifically examines ourprogram’s intervention using the VARK© inventory. The VARK© inventory can be categorized into theinstructional preferences model.
Developed in 1987 by Neil D. Fleming, an educator for more than forty years, the VARK©
inventory was developed in an effort to improve faculty development and to help students become better
learners. VARK©, an acronym for visual, aural, read/write and kinesthetic preference modalities, is aquestionnaire that determines a person’s sensory modality preferences. Sensory modalities or modal2

preferences are learning styles or methods used to process information. A student may have a preference
for one modality or be multimodal. Multimodal learners have preferences in more than one mode. It is
important to note that this questionnaire was not designed to be diagnostic or predictive of ones abilities. A
learner’s preferences do not necessarily equal what they consider to be their strengths. If a person was
found to have an aural preference, or in other words processed information best by listening to it, thatwould not negate the fact that he/she may feel that reading information was also beneficial to them. One of
the main goals of the inventory is to help students who are having some difficulty with their studies, anddetermine ways they process information and translate this into study strategies and test taking skills.
The VARK© inventory categorizes four different sensory modalities with an extra category formultimodal students. The “V” in VARK© stands for visual. Visual learners process information best if
they can see it. Graphs, flow charts and pictures are helpful to them. The “A” stands for aural, and theselearners like to hear the information. They process information best by listening to lectures, attending
tutorials and using tape recorders to play back learning sessions. The “R” stands for read/write. Thesestudents like to see the written words. They like to take notes verbatim and reread these over and overagain. They also like to read texts. Finally, the “K” stands for kinesthetic. These learners like to acquire
information through experience and practice, and prefer to learn information that has a connection toreality. The additional “multimodal” category encompasses the students who fall into more than one
sensory modality of any combination.
It has been noted that classes are largely diverse when it comes to preference modalities. Between
fifty and ninety percent of classes will be made up of multimodal students. Similarly, approximately fifty
percent of faculty members tend to be multimodal. When examining the questionnaire results, special
attention should be placed on both zero scores or very high scores since these represent a strong correlation
to a preference that should, respectively, be avoided or focused upon.
The VARK© inventory can be a useful tool for faculty because it empowers them to teach more
effectively. Educators can take the questionnaire to better appreciate the way they process information as
this often influences how they teach. Having such insight may encourage a teacher to make an effort tobroaden their teaching style so that they may reach a greater number of their students. As educators
broaden the scope of their teaching methods, they are more likely to encourage active learning on the partof their students. Students can benefit from the information provided by the VARK© inventory byfocusing their attention on the study skills suggested for their preference modality. In addition, they canimprove learning during class time because they will know which teaching method is best suited to theirstyle, and they can take an active part in increasing their learning 6.
Methods:
The idea for this educational intervention was fostered while researching faculty development
resources available on a web page from Hawaii Community Colleges during an Academic Medicine
elective at Emory University PA program. The goal of the intervention was to find a learning styleinventory that could be easily administered to the first-year Physician Assistant students so that they could
determine their best method of learning. It was intended to be an intervention early in the students' didactic
phase of education in order to maximize their learning and success. In addition, it was intended to improvefaculty awareness of the various learning styles of their students.
Fifty first-year Emory University PA program students were asked to take the VARK© inventory(figure 1), which takes approximately ten minutes to complete, on the computer at the following sitewww.active-learning-site.com/inventory1.html. They were asked to take this in preparation for a special
forty-five minute presentation on adult learning and learning styles. They were also asked to print a copy of
their result page and submit these results in order to determine what percentage of the students fell into thefollowing categories, visual, aural, read/write, kinesthetic or multimodal. The students were given one
month to accomplish this task. After this time, the students were invited to attend the forty-five minutepresentation on how adults learn, how to interpret their learning inventory results, and how they couldchange their study skills in order to maximize their learning. Approximately thirty-five students attended
the lecture. Following the presentation, there was a class discussion and a question and answer session.
Eighteen of the fifty students completed and submitted their inventory results. Following thepresentation and discussion, many students who had not taken the VARK© inventory reported that they
now intended on taking the inventory. Following this session, the students were asked to give feedback via
an e-mail questionnaire about their opinion of the VARK© inventory, the ease of use, the value of thepresentation and discussion, and were asked if they intended on using the study skills suggested in their3

respective categories. The students were also asked to report, via e-mail, any new study skills they had usedsecondary to the session and were asked if this study skill seemed to improve their learning. They weregiven one week to complete this task.
During the presentation, the students showed great enthusiasm. They asked many questions about
their results and how they could incorporate the suggested study skills into their study routine. Four out of
the fifty students asked responded to the e-mail questionnaire. All reported that they found the VARK©
inventory to be helpful. In addition, all the respondents stated that the inventory was user friendly and thelecture was useful. Finally, all four of the respondents claimed that they had incorporated one or more study
skills from their preference modality into their studies and had found that the new study skills have
improved their learning. Some of the comments received from the students are as follows:“Thank you for presenting this, I encourage everyone to at least give this a try to see if it will help
them. Please encourage the faculty to present this to next years class, possibly after the first round of exams
when people may need to adjust their study habits.”“My opinion of the inventory was positive. I really felt the analysis was useful and able to beincorporated into my learning habits.”“Good stuff. I would like to see this implemented for the first year class every year.”
The Emory University PA program faculty also reported that numerous student advisees approached themwith positive comments about the VARK© inventory, presentation and discussion.
Results:
Fifty students were invited to participate in the intervention and eighteen of these students actually
took and submitted their VARK© inventory results. Of these eighteen students, thirteen of the students fell
into the multimodal category, four fell into the read/write category and one person fell into the kinesthetic
category (figure 2). None of the students fell into the visual or aural learning preferences; however, all of
the categories were represented in various combinations in the multimodal category.
Insert Figure 1 and 2
Discussion:
A simple intervention such as administering a learning style inventory can increase a student’slearning. The VARK© inventory is a tool that is easy to use and can lead to improved learning for PA
students. It already appears to have had a positive impact on the first year PA students at Emory University
who participated in the intervention. PA faculty around the country should be encouraged to incorporate
the VARK© inventory or other such assessment tools into their curriculum. The PA education process
requires that students learn a large amount of information in a short amount of time. It is for this reason that
PA students should be given every opportunity to maximize their learning. In addition, the VARK©
inventory can be used as a faculty development tool in that it can improve faculty awareness of how
students learn and potentially improve their ability to reach and interact with students in and out of theclassroom.
It would be worthwhile and interesting to see if other PA programs would obtain similar responses
if they too administered the VARK© inventory, or another similar learning styles inventory. If the results
observed so far with this small group of students is any indication of its value, then the benefits ofincorporating the VARK© inventory into PA education curricula is self-evident. The obvious weakness of
the intervention reported in this article was that the sample size was very small as was the response rate. Inaddition, the students who submitted the VARK© inventory results and those who answered the e-mailquestionnaire were more likely to be the students who benefited the most from the intervention. Despite
these limitations, the anecdotal responses from students and faculty alike were positive, leading me tobelieve that such an intervention merits further trial and evaluation.

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