1Dept. of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, MAHSA University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2Dept. of Community Medicine, LNMCRC & JK Hospital, Bhopal, India
*Corresponding Author: Dr. Heethal Jaiprakash Associate Professor, Dept. of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, MAHSA University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Email: heethaljp@gmail.com
Online published on 1 November, 2018.
To assess the perception and knowledge acquired by medical students with the use of Computer assisted learning (CAL), self-learning package (SLP) and didactic lecture as teaching learning activities.
This is a quasi-experimental questionnaire based study, conducted among 169 year 1 MBBS students, by dividing them into 3 groups by block randomization. Group A (n=56) received didactic lecture, group B (n=57), CAL and group C (n=56) a SLP on ‘Pharmacotherapy of Bronchial Asthma’. The sessions were held in parallel. Pretest and post-test was given to assess knowledge gain and a validated questionnaire was used to evaluate the perception of the students. The data was analyzed using Student's paired “t” test for pre and post test scores. Two sample t test with equal variance was used to compare the difference between two means among groups.
In pre to post-test score analysis, the mean improvement was significantly higher in group B and group C. The difference between two means was highly significant for group A and B (p=0.0000) and for group B and C (p=0.0002). However there was no significant difference between means of group A and C (p=0.1494). Students in group B perceived that they developed conceptual understanding and it helped learn actively. Students from group A & C opined that they would prefer an alternative teaching-learning activity.
CAL being an effective and well-perceived TLA by the students, it will be worthwhile to further explore the scope of CAL for more topics in the curriculum.
Computer-Assisted Learning, Self-Learning Package, Teaching-Learning Activity
