Does study skill matter? A descriptive study on undergraduate health profession students in the University of West Indies

Introduction: Academic success requires students to evolve good study skills, time management and reducing distractions. As students in medical education are adult learners, it is expected that students need to be effective learners and should use self-directed strategy to find out the necessary information. Therefore, the teaching learning process in medical schools should encourage and motivate students to improve their self-directed capabilities. This body of research was conducted to identify the different study habits among students from five undergraduate health disciplines. Method: The Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) questionnaire was administered to 367 students from five undergraduate health disciplines selected through convenient sampling. Results: The most popular definition of learning picked up by the respondents (73.3%) was ‘able to use the information’. Majority of the students were found to be strategic/deep learners. Male (vs. female students) and nursing students (vs. others) opted deep approach of learning. Students who are staying at home mainly used strategic/deep approach. Deep style was adopted least by the dentistry students, whereas the strategic style was used least by the veterinary students. One way ANOVA reveals that types of school in which the students are enrolled has significant effect on all the subscales of approach to studying either at 0.05 or 0.01 levels except ‘interest in ideas’ and ‘organised studying’. Conclusion: Students from different schools used varied approaches to their study and understanding of learning and as a whole student mainly adopted strategic and deep approaches, Students with a deep approach usually achieve a higher academic performance and motivating students towards a deep approach should be main aim of the medical science curricula. Further studies of learning styles in other medical schools in the Caribbean are required to examine whether there are specific benefits to particular styles for certain disciplines.