Nursing and midwifery students' attitude toward virtual education and its relationship with learning styles

Introduction: Currently, e-learning is one of the achievements of the development of information and communication technology as an innovation. Given the increasing prevalence of e-learning and the need to address the factors influencing the improvement of the teaching-virtual learning process, this study was designed to investigate the attitude of Bam Nursing and Midwifery students towards virtual education and its relation to learning styles in 2019. Methods: This is a cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study. The research environment of Bam School of Nursing and Midwifery is the study population of all students and the sampling method is census. After obtaining permission from the authorities and obtaining informed consent from the students, the questionnaires were completed by the students. The data were then entered into the computer and analyzed by SPSS 21 software. Results: A total of 227 students with mean age of 21.44 ± 3.14 years participated in the study. The highest mean was allocated to visual style and the lowest average to auditory style. The mean score of visual learning style and motor learning style are directly related to the mean score of attitude toward virtual education. There was an inverse relationship between the mean score of auditory learning style and attitude about virtual education. Among the underlying variables, only the native or non-native variable was related to attitudes toward virtual education (P = 0.047). Conclusion: Given the great benefits of virtual education and the positive attitude of students towards it, more emphasis should be placed on providing more virtual education. Considering different learning styles, in the process of planning virtual education and preparing educational content, learning styles should also be taken into consideration so that all learners with any type of learning style can have active and effective learning.