A study on the quality of study skills of newly-admitted students of Fasa University of Medical Sciences

Introduction: Some students attribute their academic failure to such factorsas low aptitude, unavailability of resources, and bad luck. However, we candare to say that the most important factor playing a role in academic successis students’ little acquaintance with learning and study skills. This study aimedat examining the quality of study skills in newly-admitted students of FasaMedical University so that the results can be used in holding teaching coursesin study skills.Methods: The present study is a cross-sectional descriptive study. The samplingwas done of all the newly-admitted students in the first semester of 2012-13academic year including 94 students of Medicine, Nursing and LaboratoryTechnology. The data were collected through a questionnaire, consisting oftwo parts. The first part included items on demographic information of thesubjects (such as sex, field of study, number of hours dedicated to studying,student’s rank in Konkour, and the National University entrance exam. Thesecond part was composed of 19 special items on such domains as ‘Timemanagement’, ‘Concentration’, ‘Class note-taking’, ‘Studying’ and ‘Taking exams’with 4, 5, 4, 3, 3 items, respectively. The checklists were filled in using Likertscale. The collected data was then analyzed using an SPSS 14, through whichdescriptive statistics as mean, standard deviation and multiple regressions wereobtained. Moreover, the data were analyzed using Independent Sample T andANOVA tests.Results: The results showed that the range of the students’ study skills was2.35, being rather below the normal level; the highest mean belonged to‘concentration’(2.56), but the lowest mean was that of ‘time management’(2.05). Through ANOVA test, it was also shown that there was no significantdifference between the students of Medicine, Nursing and LaboratorySciences regarding their scores on ‘study skills’ as (p=0.646). In addition,through independent sample t-test, it was shown that there was no significantdifference between the subjects’ ‘sex’ and ‘study skills’ as the p-value was0.584. On the other hand, through multiple regressions, the results indicatedthat there was a significant difference between ‘Taking exams’ and ‘Studying’(p=0.0003), between ‘Class note-taking’ and ‘‘Taking exams’ (p=0.0004),between ‘Concentration’ and ‘Taking exams’ (p=0.00025), and between ‘Timemanagement’ and ‘Taking exams’ (p=0.00001). Overall, Class note-taking’ wasproved to have the greatest effect on ‘Taking exams’ (B=1.58).Conclusion: Regarding the very important role of study skills in learning, it isrecommended that ‘study skills’ and ‘study habits’ courses be included in thestudents’ curriculum formally or implemented as workshops for students.Keywords: Skills, Students, Learning