Comparison of Traditional Teaching with Integrated Teaching among First Year Medical Undergraduate Students

During the first year of MBBS, subjects of basic medical science are taught. It is very important that medical undergraduates develop clear concept about various topics, so that they can understand pathology, medicine and so on in future. At the same time, students should be able to correlate anatomy, physiology and biochemistry of particular topic also.

The aim of this study is to compare the effectiveness of traditional teaching (TT) and integrated teaching (IT) in terms of students’ performance to know students’ perception about TT and IT and their preferred method of choice.

First year MBBS students of Pacific Medical College and Hospital, Udaipur, were divided into either TT group or IT group by randomisation. Students were taught a topic ‘functioning of liver’ in respective group by either traditional method or IT method. A pretest and post-test was taken to check their performance. Another topic ‘Coronary circulation’ was also taught with crossover of study groups. Students’ feedback was also taken. Data were analysed by applying suitable statistical tests.

No significant difference was found among TT and IT group while comparing their pre and post-test score for topic ‘functioning of liver’ and ‘coronary circulation’ questions associated with lower level of cognition as per Miller's pyramid. But significant difference for score in post-test was found for both the topics for questions associated with higher level of cognition as per Miller's pyramid. The IT group performed significantly better. A total of 63.28% of students voted for IT as their preferred method of learning. Long-term retention for the topic taught was also significantly better among IT group.

The IT method especially helpful in developing comprehensive knowledge of the topic thereby improves the performance of the students for questions which checks higher level of cognition. IT is also preferred method of learning among students.