Interactive teaching in medical education: Experiences and barriers

Abstract

An interactive teaching method is a form of learning and communicative activity, which focuses on students’ needs and allows them to actively participate in the learning process. With the introduction of competency based medical education (CBME), new teaching methods have been introduced to ensure the attainment of competencies by medical graduates. Research shows that interactive activity in class is an effective teaching learning method. There are many studies which have reported that students prefer interactive lectures based on active learning principles. Despite this, it has been found that many students do not engage with active learning exercise, which is probably due to the reason that among students, there is an already established culture of teaching and learning. The interactive lectures need to be designed after exploring student expectations, feedback, and experiences. Faculty members too have their own skepticism about the use of innovative methods in their teaching. These challenges need to be addressed for successful implementation of CBME based curriculum in medical education. With this review, we present the experiences about the use of interactive teaching methods in the field of medical education and also point out various barriers and challenges on the path of its execution.