Learning styles and online interfaces: support to on-campus teaching in health graduations

Abstract

Background:

Health education has experienced movements of change to its traditional model and the search for innovative propositions, which reorient the training of professionals in the face of the singularities of our Health System and the development of skills for the new times that are already present. In this sense, the work starts from the assumption that the exploration of technological strategies in health degrees enhances learning experiences capable of walking together with the technical rigor and humanization of care that is essential to health training.

Objective:

To evaluate the preference and satisfaction of students of health degrees in the use of different technologies in face-to-face higher education in relation to their learning styles (LS).

Method:

Prospective research with the participation of 114 first-year students of Nursing courses and Medicine at the Botucatu Medical School (FMB-Unesp) enrolled in the Interaction University Service Community course (IUSC I), who initially answered the LS questionnaire and, later, the questions about preference and satisfaction in using Moodle and Facebook in pedagogical activities. Student’s t-test was used to compare the averages and the χ² test was used to compare proportions. The level of significance was set at 5% (α=0.05).

Results:

Regardless of graduation or gender, there was a predominance of reflective LS among students. Considering the LS, there was no difference in the use of Moodle and Facebook; however, there was greater preference and satisfaction for the use of Facebook in relation to Moodle, regardless of the LS.

Conclusions:

The use of technological resources, active methodologies, and LS mapping does not in itself guarantee the student’s role and autonomy in a new teaching-learning scenario. Digital literacy, forged in the negotiation and renegotiation of individual and collective experience, can only be achieved through pedagogical intentionality.

Keywords:
interprofessional education; health education; learning styles; B-learning