Interactive teaching: Understanding perspectives of II MBBS students in Pathology

Abstract

Background and Context: In medical education, lectures comprise an important mode of teaching. A lecture running into an hour can become monotonous and fails to hold attention until the end. There is a need to explore innovations in planning lectures so as to sustain interest. Aim: Introduce interactive teaching methods during lectures and elicit students′ perception about them. Materials and Methods: A number of interactive methods such as group discussions, brainstorming, question answer sessions, multiple choice questions (MCQs), confusion technique and summaries were introduced in the course of the lectures in a batch of 150 medical students. Later the perceptions of the students were elicited regarding these sessions using a questionnaire based on Likert scale, which was validated in a pilot study. Results: Validation of the scale indicated good internal consistency with Crohnbach′s alpha coefficient of 0.9. Majority (73%) of the students agreed or completely agreed to like the sessions. Similarly, 75% agreed or completely agreed to like teamwork. Most popular interactive mode was MCQs (76% agreed to completely agreed), followed by brainstorming (64% agreed to completely agreed) and confusion technique (53% agreed to completely agreed). Most students were also of the view that interactivity during lectures improved communication skills, helped in retention of the topic, improved attention span and would want the method introduced for all lectures. Conclusion: A paradigm shift toward interactive sessions during lectures is required to make them effective.