Human beings start learning by observing the environ-ment from the first moment of their lives. The question of learning has been a central topic in many researches (Felder and Silverman, 1988; Given, 1996; Barsch, 1996; Wong, 1997; ?im?ek, 2002; Ormrod, 2008; Domjan, 2010; Gokalp, 2013; Babacan, 2015) in which psychologists have pointed out many principles behind learning and different approaches. Learning has been defined functionally as changes in behaviour that result from experience, or mechanistically as changes in the organism (Skinner, 1984; Lachman, 1997). A different opinion emerges from Houwer et al. (2013) that learning is an ontogenetic adaptation, that is, as changes in the behaviour of an organism that result  from  regularities  in the environment. To extend, learning is the process through which we use our experience to deal with new situations, develop relationships and cause relatively permanent changes in behaviour emerging as a result of individual’s interaction with the environment (Demirel, 2008; Senemo?lu, 2011). Thus, learning is considered as the results and products obtained at the end of students’ educational activities. There exists many factors affecting behaviour changes in learning process. These factors can be listed as students, learning environment, learning topics, learning process, curriculum, family, psychology, applied methods and techniques (Ye?ilyaprak, 2008; Saban, 2002). Learning also depends on aptitude, motivation,  instructional   methods,    background,   study strategies and learning styles as the strengths and preferences of individuals’ receiving, handling and processing of information (Felder, 1993; A?kar and Akkoyunlu, 1993).

The phrase “learning modality/style” refers to all the different ways in which learners acquire, process, retain information and demonstrate what they know (URL1: http://www.c-pal.net/course/module4/ m4_learning_ modalities.html; Woolfolk, 1993). More formally, Keefe (1979) defines learning styles as “the characteristics; cognitive, affective, and psychological behaviours that serve as relatively stable indicators of how learners perceive, interact with, and respond to the learning environment”.

Knowing the most suitable learning modalities help individuals improve their learning ability. The harmony between students’ activities and learning modalities increase their academic achievements. The appropriateness of teaching and learning style affects not only the academic success but also the features such as motivation and attitude (Felder and Silverman, 1988; Given, 1996; Barsch, 1996). Different perspectives on learning styles encountered in the literature can be briefly outlined as:

1)  Jung’s Psychological Type Theory: If a person is more interested in outside world, he/she is called extroverted but if a person is interested in inner world, then he/she is called introverted (Sharp, 1987).

2) Gregorc’s (1984) Learning Styles Model: Every mind of a person has an ability to perceive the world as concrete or abstract and organize it in a linear or non-linear way.

3) Kolb’s (1985) Learning Styles: The learning methods regarding these styles symbolize four learning styles which are different from one another. Those methods are claimed to be learned by feeling concrete experience, watching reflective observation, thinking abstract conceptualization and doing active experience.

4) Felder and Silverman’s Learning Styles: There are four independent dimensions in which learning style is defined as strengths and preferences of individuals in the process of getting, keeping and processing knowledge trying to reveal the learner’s preferences and tendencies in different areas (Felder, 1993).

5) Barsch (1996) developed a learning style/modality inventory that divides students into three groups in terms of learning. These groups are called visual learners, auditory learners and tactual/kinaesthetic learners.

It is clear that just as a single shoe size does not fit everyone; neither does a single learning environment or instructional method ensure learning for all. The students are not only from different localities, cultures, and home experiences, but also from different educational back-grounds. Instead of proposing a monotype model of learning, it was required to put forward student’s preferences according to his/her individual differences and characteristics. Students should choose and decide appropriate route   for   themselves  among  the ways  of achieving learning objectives (URL1).

Success mostly depends on being aware of and directing the learning modalities which facilitate self-learning expected from a student to follow effective ways in choosing, regulating and integrating the target information. This suggests that it is necessary to teach learning strategies and direct proper learning modalities to students starting from primary schools to universities. It becomes apparent a new study to be performed  on the learning characteristics which are generally accepted as effective on learning, group characteristics, input characteristics and learning modalities (Öztürk, 1995; Sünbül, 1998; Suba??, 2000; ?im?ek, 2002; Erdem, 2004; Ayd?n, 2008; Ünal, 2010).

Determining the learning modalities of students in terms of their profile will provide an insight to both teachers and learners in the process of teaching and learning. This study will also help individuals to eliminate and determine educational problems such as failure, waste of time and energy. Besides, it was aimed to get learners to know themselves and raise their awareness, contribute to the stakeholders to be more successful by drawing attention to the learner-centred activities.

The study objectives were to reveal the learning modalities of students measured by “BIG-16 test”, distribution of sub-dimensions of learning modalities and any significant difference among students’ modalities in terms of gender, departments, grades and academic achievements.

This study included the students studying at Ahi Evran University, Turkey. The data was gathered from 249 randomly chosen undergraduate students enrolled in 9 different departments at the university in the year of 2013-2014. The sample comprised 44.6% males and 55.4% females whose department fields are given in Table 1.

In this study, the inventory “BIG-16 Learning Modality Inventory” inspired by Barsch’s study (1996) and developed by ?im?ek (2002) was used to gather the data of the learning modalities of undergraduate students in Turkey. It can be used in determining the learning modalities of students at the age between 16-25.

“BIG-16” consists of three sections and 48 statements. Each section has sixteen items measuring the student’s preferences for different types of learning modalities as kinaesthetic, visual or auditory. These dimensions are kinaesthetic, visual and auditory learning. If a person prefers kinaesthetic learning, he/she is interested in the concepts such as balance, dancing, theatre, drama, activities and gestures. When an individual adopts visual learning, he/she pays more attention to details, drawings, shapes, envisioning, colour and direction. If a person gives particular importance to auditory learning, it implies that he/she prefers speaking, listening, tone of voice, melody, poem and discussions.

The internal reliability coefficient of BIG-16 was originally 0.844 which was confirmed by the researcher and Cronbach Alfa Coefficient specifically for this study calculated as 0.846 that indicated acceptable reliability.  Model conformity values has been tested by the researcher through confirmatory factor analysis, and the following results have been achieved: x2 / df= 1,97; RMSEA= 0,067;  SRMR =  0,076;  GFI =  0,75;  AGFI = 0,72; CFI= 0,78; NFI= 

0,63; IFI= 0,78 and NNFI= 0,77. These results indicated that the items in the scale had validity and reliability to measure the opinions of the study group.

Each three dimensions of the scale were consisted of 16 items and scored as “Strongly agree= 5”, “Agree= 4”, “Hesitant= 3”, “Disagree= 2”, “Strongly disagree= 1”. The range of the items in the inventory according to dimensions were as visual learning ( 2, 4, 6, 12, 14, 20, 25, 28, 30, 35, 36, 37, 40, 43, 46, 48), auditory learning (1, 3, 8, 9, 13, 17, 21, 22, 26, 29, 31, 33, 39, 42, 44, 47) and  kinaesthetic learning ( 5, 7, 10, 11, 15, 16, 18, 19, 23, 24, 27, 32, 34, 38, 41, 45). The inventory was handed out to the respondents in the class and wanted to point out their perceptions with each statement rating a five point Likert scale in one session.

The data indicating academic achievements of the students were stratified into three groups which were occupied by considering the arithmetic mean of students’ total grades, “0,00- 1,99= unsuccessful”; “2,00 – 2,99 = fairly well”; “3,00 – 4,00=successful” on out of four.

While analysing the data gathered by the questionnaire which was administered the students to evaluate themselves, the scores were transferred to the computer through the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 17.0) programme and performed parametric analysis since normality of the items  was tested by One-Sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test and there was no significant difference among the sub-dimensions of learning modalities, kinaesthetic learning (Z₍₂₄₉₎= 0.785; p>0.05), auditory learning(Z₍₂₄₉₎= 0.771; p>0.05) and visual learning(Z₍₂₄₉₎= 0.870; p>0.05) scores of students. These findings pointed out that the items in the scale distributed normally. Therefore, frequency (f), percentage (%), mean (), standard deviation (SD), independent sample t-test, one way ANOVAs and Pearson correlation tests were utilized to identify learning modalities of the participants (Büyüköztürk, 2003; Yaz?c?o?lu and Erdo?an, 2007; Balc?, 2005; Kalayc?, 2008).

d) Learning modalities of the students in terms of grades: The grades that the participants have attended with the scores of the learning modalities were displayed in Table 4. 

ANOVAs of the scores of participants in terms of their achievements were employed to see if there was any significant difference among successful, fairly well and unsuccessful students (Table 7).

Once compared the data indicating academic achievements of the students to learning modality scores (Table 7), it could be revealed that there was no significant difference among kinaesthetic (F₍₂₄₆₎₌ 0.886;  p>.05), auditory ( F₍₂₄₆₎₌ 1,138;  p>0.05)  and visual scores (F₍₂₄₅₎₌ 0.964;  p>0.05) in terms of achievement. In spite of no significant difference, it was worth saying that the more successful students, the higher scores in learning modalities.

The results of the study were concluded after analysing the data obtained from the participants’ learning modalities (kinaesthetic, auditory or visual learning).

a) Although it was calculated that the highest mean score was for ‘visual learning’ followed by ‘auditory’ and the lowest one was  for  ‘kinaesthetic  learning’,  the  students preferred to use all different learning modalities in different proportions. That is, they employed all their sensory organs in the process of education. Dale (1969) and Scott (1976) emphasized that the best learning could be possible by experiences and much more learning occurred with the help of eyes. Accordingly, Babacan (2015) found out that more than half of the teacher candidates who were studying at universities, preferred visual learning and visual learning modality rather than the others. As a conclusion, the higher numbers of sensory organs were found playing an important role in better learning.

b) When comparing gender differences, female students’ scores for visual and auditory learning were significantly higher than male ones. However, there was no significant difference between female and male students’ scores for kinaesthetic learning; males’ scores were slightly higher. It means that female students preferred auditory and visual learning while male students took part in kinaesthetic learning activities. Having better physical learning modalities could be related to male students’ natural tendency to the activities concerning muscle and movement.

Goldfinch and Hughes (2007) performed a study on university students’ abilities, learning modalities and achievements  in   which   female   students   were  found learning more easily by auditory and visually than male ones. The results were proved by Senemo?lu (2011), Ekici (2013) and Babacan (2015) that female students were highly motivated, patient and had an aesthetic sense in nature, paid more interest and concentration.

c) Considering three different categorical modalities for all departments; mean of visual learning scores was found the highest but kinaesthetic learning was the lowest of them. By the comparison of participants’ kinaesthetic, auditory and visual learning scores according to the departments, there was no significant difference among them. Likely, Demir (2008) and Ergür (2010) stated out that students’ learning modalities did not cause any difference in terms of academic fields. Even if the difference was not significant, visual scores of students at computer and scientific study fields were higher compared to the auditory scores of social sciences. That is, experimental learning was preferred by science students while auditory learning comes first for the students studying social sciences.

d) Analysing the mean scores of participants considering the level of grades; second grade students’ visual learning mean score was the highest but kinaesthetic learning mean score of fresh students was the lowest of all. Participants’ kinaesthetic, auditory and visual scores were compared according to the grades and no significant difference was obtained among them.

Learning modality scores of the first grade students were concluded comparatively lower while the level of the class and scores were getting higher together. This result is in line with other researches. As an example, in the study carried out by Richardson (1995) and Sadler- Smith (1996) stated that as the level of class increases, the meaningful learning increases as well. On the other hand, Senemo?lu (2011) claimed that superficial learning style scores of first grade university students were higher than those of upper class students but upper class students preferred deep learning styles. In the light of  the  findings and the studies mentioned above, fresh students can be recommended to be take part in orientation activities to get better understanding of learning process in higher education.

e) Comparing the data indicating academic achievements of the students and the scores of learning modalities revealed for all the categories (kinaesthetic, auditory, visual) that successful students’ scores were the highest of all while unsuccessful students’ scores were the lowest. It could be concluded by the comparison of participants’ kinaesthetic, auditory and visual scores in terms of their achievement that there was no significant difference among them. But it was seen that the more successful students, the higher scores they had.

The findings revealed the extent to which students used learning modalities, which specific preferences were perceived as most useful for what aspects of their learning, and what approach was used related to their achievement. The studies conducted by Sünbül (1998), Tay (2013) and Lynch (2006) showed that the teaching of the learning strategies and styles at university level led to increase in students’ academic success.

On the other hand, Kirschner and Van Merri?nboer (2013) and Cassidy (2004) claimed that there were fundamental problems with regard to the measurement of learning styles and the theoretical basis for the assumed interactions between learning modalities and instructional methods. Moreover they stated out that though very appealing, there was no solid evidence that learning style actually exist and any benefit to adapting and designing education and instruction according to the learning modalities. From an educational point of view, they believed that it was more fruitful to focus on the fundamental things that learners have in common. But a focus arisen on what learners have in common did not deny that there were individual differences which should be taken as really a matter in education and to design instructional methods.

Once learning modalities and individual differences of the learners were determined and learning environments were designed accordingly, academic achievements of the learners would increase as well (Ekici, 2013; Babado?an, 2000; Tunçer and Güven, 2007). Likewise, Dikba? and Kaf Has?rc? (2008) emphasized that students’ learning strategies had a positive effect on academic success. They indicated that teaching and learning strategies of students in a lesson helped to use and control their knowledge, increase academic success, have their own learning responsibility. It was underlined the necessity and benefits of organizing a suitable learning environment. When learning modalities were taught to students systematically, it could be observed an increase in the amount of learning and recalling in a very short time. It was also considered that learning modalities affected academic success positively within suitable education or instruction environment supported by modalities (Gokalp, 2013; Uzuntiryaki et al., 2003).

Scott (1976), Prashnig (2000) and Koç (2000) concluded that learning modality appears to be a significant factor that should be considered to develop one’s reading. The research strongly suggested that modality preferences of children should be identified and that it might be wise for educators to capitalize on model preferences.

To sum up, it needs to reveal students’ learning modalities and push up their academic achievements. It can be concluded that achievement and learning modality relationship play a key factor in the process of teaching and learning. If teachers understand their teaching styles, as well as recognize the students’ learning modalities, there should be less conflict and problem. Understanding how one learns and eventually works in the real world, involves understanding how one performs, makes decisions, and solve problems

So, educational administers and instructors should take individual difference and preferences into account, and have encouragement of employing modality based instruction. 

The author have not declared any conflict of interests.