Does Student's Preferred Studying Environment related with their Perceptual learning style preference?

Background and Objective: Due to rapid advances in the field of information and communicationtechnology and its wider application in all aspects of life, communities are faced to unprecedentedchanges. Choice of media (print or electronic) may be influenced by student's preference learningstyle. So the aim of this study is to determine relation between student's preference learning styleand their preference studying environment.Material and Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed at the first semester of 2010-11in Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences. The samples were 360 students. Data were collectedby a two part questionnaire. The first part contained demographic characteristics and determiningthe student's preferred environment for study and the second part was standard Perceptual Learning-Style Preference questionnaire. Information was analyzed by SPSS software version 16 anddescriptive, chi-square and Fisher tests.Results: The results showed that most students tend to print media (50% vs. 23.3%). Highestfrequency of learning styles among students was tactile (83.1%) and auditory (74.7%) and thelowest frequency is related to individual learning styles (36.9%). There was no statistical significantrelation between student's Perceptual Learning-Style Preference with their age, gender and courseof study, while the relation of group Learning-Style with preferred studying environment wassignificant. ( χ2 test p = 0/004 and df = 4)Conclusion: According to findings it appears better that Instead of teachers focusing on the learningstyles, combining variety of learning activities should be considered. This lead to the developmentof different learning styles experience of learners and enhance the learning process