A Comparison of Conventional Teaching (Didactic Lectures) and Integrated Teaching for MBBS Students

Medical education in India is currently compartmentalised into different subjects with little or no integration. Topics in basic sciences are taught in isolation which fail to help the student correlate it with the clinical postings. In order to overcome this shortcoming, Medical Council of India has recommended the integrated teaching method and also strives to make it a part of regular curriculum.

The study was undertaken to compare the effectiveness of integrated teaching with conventional lectures and to understand the students’ perception of the same.

60 students of MBBS 2^nd year were included in the study and were divided into two batches (A and B) with 30 students each. The same topic was taught using didactic lectures to Batch A and using integrated teaching to Batch B. The pretest and post-test scores between the batches were then compared statistically to determine the improvement in knowledge following both teaching learning methods. Feedback was collected from the students regarding both methods.

Conventional teaching method (t-score=5.3762, P-value <0.001) as well as integrated teaching method (t-score=7.8195, P-value <0.001) significantly increased students’ knowledge. Analyses of the pre-and post-test scores of Batch A and Batch B showed that there is statistically significant increase in knowledge of students of Batch B as compared to Batch A (t-score=4.3179, P-value <0.001). Student's feedback also indicated a greater preference for integrated teaching as compared to didactic lectures. Integrated teaching sparked an interest in the topic in a majority of students which conventional teaching failed to achieve.

Integrated teaching is a more effective teaching learning methodology for medical undergraduates as compared to didactic lectures. A majority of students prefer integrated teaching over didactic lectures.