Abstract
Objective: To assess the learning style preferences among undergraduate nursing students and their association with the academic level (years) at public and private institutions.
Methodology: In this descriptive cross-sectional study, a sample of 360 students was taken from four nursing colleges of Lahore by using probability stratified random sampling method. Ninety students were taken from each class/year of all four colleges. Self-administered structured VARK questionnaire version 7.8 was used. Chi-Square test was used to determine the association of academic year and preferred leaning style among nursing students.
Result: We found that 43% respondents preferred uni-modal learning style in which 42% were from 1st year, 48% from 2nd year, 49% from 3rd year and 33% were from final year. On the other hand, 38% students preferred bimodal learning and 16% preferred trimodal and the least chosen method was quadric-modal by 2%. A significant association was observed between students ‘academic years and preferred learning modes (p<0.001).
Conclusion: Unimodal was the most preferred learning model whereas quadrimodal as the least preferred model. However, the other two models i.e. bimodal and trimodal were not completely un-preferred but the same were also preferred by a few students. The first- and second-year’s students were mostly visual and aural learners, while the third and final years students were mostly kinesthetic learners.

Key words: Education, undergraduate, nursing students, academic performance.