Evaluation of a Community Orientation Program for First Year Medical Undergraduate Students

Against the backdrop of the new changes effected in the curriculum by the affiliating university a short-term community orientation programme was designed for the medical undergraduate (MBBS) students. This study aims at evaluating the one-week community orientation program based on students’ feedback, their performance in the assessment test and to understand the correlation between feedback evaluation scores and the student assessment scores.

Feedback was obtained by an anonymized self administered questionnaire which assessed their improvement in understanding through likert scale and understanding the factors which facilitated or hindered learning through open ended questions. Student assessment was conducted in the form a 20-item MCQ test. Spearman's correlation was done to find out the association between program feedback scores and student assessment scores.

61.5% said that the program had greatly improved their understanding of the topics. Field visits (72.6%) and intra-session activities (71.6%) had helped in improving their understanding greatly and lecture mode of teaching (68%) was perceived by majority of students as a session that had slight or no change in the understanding of the subject. Students scored highest on topics that used activities in intra-session activities (95.3%), field visits and group discussions (93.5% each) followed by role plays (91.6%).

Active teaching methods are greatly accepted by students and help them attain their learning objectives and feedback serves as an effective evaluation tool for assessing teaching programs.