Comparative study of chalkboard teaching over PowerPoint teaching as a teaching tool in undergraduate medical teaching

Abstract

Background: Teaching aids like chalkboard, PowerPoint (PPT), etc. have been used in undergraduate medical teaching but the superiority of these aids over one another has not been proven. Objectives: The present study was conducted to evaluate the impact of the chalkboard and PPT based lectures in undergraduate medical teaching on medical students. Material and methods: This study was conducted in Department of Physiology, Index Medical College Hospital & research centre, Indore, India. Hundred medical students were randomly divided into two groups and two lectures were delivered on two different topics. For one topic, for one group lecture was delivered using chalkboard, for second group, same topic was delivered using PPT presentation. And for second topic, for first group lecture was delivered using PPT and for second group using chalkboard. Single-best Multiple Choice Questions [MCQs] paper was used for assessing the knowledge gained on the next day. One direct question to note student preferences for these aids was included. The differences in the marks obtained in the two groups were analyzed by independent student’s “t”-test. Results: Students who attended the class using chalkboard obtained significantly higher score in MCQ test compared to those who attended the same content based lecture using PowerPoint (p < 0.05). The chalkboard lectures were preferred by 87% of the students. Conclusion: The results of the present study suggest that chalkboard teaching has the advantage of a better recall besides being the most preferred aid among first year medical students.