1Associate Professor in Pharmacology, GMERS Medical College, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India
2Third Year Resident in Community Medicine, PDU Medical College, Rajkot, Gujarat, India
3Associate Professor in Community Medicine, NHL Municipal Medical College, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India
4Professor in Pharmacology, B.J. Medical College, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India
*Corresponding author email id: darshanjd79@yahoo.com
Online published on 24 November, 2017.
Interactive lectures are even though most commonly used teaching-learning method, they are having lesser impact for achieving better learning outcomes. If the reading of lecture topic in accordance to the questions that can create interest in the topic and hence stimulate students to read before lecture, it may be helpful to achieve better learning outcome.
1. To evaluate the effect of pre-lecture reading with predefined questions on the learning outcome (memory) of medical students; 2. To know the perception of students through feedback questionnaire.
Interventional randomised crossover study was conducted on second-year MBBS students who gave informed consent. After randomisation, pre-validated and structured test was taken on both control group and interventional group. Interventional group was instructed to read the lecture topic with pre-validated questions with materials provided followed by an interactive lecture for both groups followed immediately by post-test. Feedback of students of intervention group was taken on a predesigned Likert scale questionnaire. Same procedure was followed on the next day with crossover groups with different lecture topic. Second post-test was taken after 14 days.
Improvement in the total mean score was observed in post-test 1 (4.42 and n = 90) and post-test 2 (2.53, n = 81) as compared with pre-test (0.62, n = 80). Median change in score in post-test 1 in intervention group was statistically significantly higher (p < 0.01) as compared with control group (4 vs. 3), but not statistically significant (p = 0.95) in post-test 2 (1.62 vs. 1.5). Students were agree to strongly agree according to the feedback regarding liking, helpful to memorise, understand and perform better in exam.
Pre-lecture reading according to predesigned questions led to improvement in short-term memory but won't be helpful to sustain this improvement on long term. But study should be repeated in different medical subjects as well as in different institute on a larger scale to achieve a definite conclusion.
Pre-test, Post-test, Pre-lecture reading, Likert scale, Predefined questions, Lecture, Learning outcome
