Evaluating the effectiveness of Physiology lectures by introducing pre-test and post-test in a medical college

Abstract

Traditional didactic lectures is one of the commonly followed method of teaching learning in most of the medical colleges to teach undergraduate medical students till now. This method is a passive method of learning in which teacher will be talking and students has to listen, this type of teaching is dominating our MBBS curriculum. Students find these lecture classes very boring. Also after the implementation of new competency based medical education (CBME) by Medical council of India, medical education for undegraduates needs lots of recent improvements to provide satisfactory changing demands in medical practice. Physiology lecture classes was restructured with introduction of pre and post-test, knowledge before and after the lecture were obtained by comparing the test scores before and after to evaluate the enhancement of learning after the lectures. Also feedback regarding the introduction of pre & post -test from the students were taken for evaluating the effectiveness of lectures with the introduction of the test before and after the lecture classes. 1. To provide Pre-test & Post-test questions before lecture and after lecture classes on the topic; 2. To evaluate the enhancement of Learning after lecture based on post-test scores; 3. To evaluate the effectiveness of physiology lecture among students in relation to feedback obtained. The present study was conducted on 150 First year M.B.B.S during Physiology lectures, after obtaining Ethical clearance from the Instituitional Ethical Committee, Adichunchanagiri Institute of Medical Sciences, Adichunchanagiri university.I MBBS(150) students after obtaining consent for voluntary participation were asked to take the pre-test question s containing 20 multiple choice questions on topic “Cardiac cycle & Cardiac output” and the same 20 multiple choice questions were provided to the students at the end of the four hour lecture classes on the topic. Performance of the students with the salient concepts on the topic were assessed by the pre-test & post-test scores. Feedback from all students were obtained regarding perception of students on the use of pre and post-test in learning the salient concepts in physiology were obtained by administering a questionnaire.Pre-test score of the students obtained before the start of the lecture was 5.57±1.29 and the Post-test score of the students obtained after the end of four hour lecture classes on the topic was 15.26±9.7 (p < 0.0001) this was highly significant. Feedback obtained from the students was indicative of that most of the students felt that test was very interesting, innovative, they could focus more on the lecture classes, it helped them to learn the salient concepts in physiology, also most of them felt competitive aspect of the test contributed to their effectiveness and most of them wanted it during lectures. From the present study we would like to conclude that introducing pre and post-test in lectures could enhance learning among students. Also we could evaluate the effectiveness of lectures by introducing pre and post – test based on feedback obtained from the students.