learning styles of medical and midwifery students in mashhad

background     purpose:     methods     results     conclusion     key words     students .     journal of medical education winter and spring 2008; 12 (1,2): 17-22 : m edical e ducation , l earning m odels vark, v isual , a uditory , r ead -w rite , k inesthetic , s   : knowing that our students have different preferred learning modes will help medical instructors in our faculty develop appropriate learning approaches and explore opportunities so that they will be able to make the educational experience more productive. : the dominant learning preference of our students was aural preference (30.8%) followed by read/write (20.6%), while (7.5%) were in kinesthetic and (5.6%) were visual learners; still most of the students (35.5%) represented a multimodal learning preference. no significant difference was found between males and females. the general pattern between medical student and midwifery student is the same. there was a significant relation between internship entrance exam score and the learning styles of medical student and who were more read/write got higher scores. : this study was conducted to describe learning styles of 214 medical and midwifery students in mashhad university of medical sciences. by using the english version of the vark questionnaire, we measured the difference in learning styles of medical students and midwifery students and compared with 57336 global general students who completed the test in vark website up to sep 2007. we aimed to assess different learning styles of medical students in our collage. : students have individual learning style preferences including visual (v; learning from graphs, charts, and flow diagrams), auditory (a; learning from speech), read-write(r; learning from reading and writing), and kinesthetic (k; learning from touch, hearing, smell, taste, and sight). these preferences can be assessed using the vark questionnaire.