Opinions about Teaching Modalities: A Comparison between Faculty and Students

Shilpa Shah,Gerhard Meisenberg

doi:10.1155/2012/604052

Abstract

Little is known about the acceptance of different teaching/learning modalities by students and faculty in the preclinical semesters of medical school. We report the results of an anonymous survey at Ross University School of Medicine, where most of the currently popular instructional methods are used. Study subjects included 327 students and 30 faculty members. 5 questions each were asked about lectures, handouts, textbooks, mediasite (video-recorded lectures), simulation, PBL (problem based learning), TBL (team-based learning), and ICM (introduction to clinical medicine, physical examination) practicals, scored on a 5-step Likert scale. Response rates were approximately 80% for students and more than 50% for faculty. Students gave the highest scores to mediasite followed by simulation, handouts, and ICM practicals. Lowest student scores were for PBL followed by TBL and textbooks. Faculty gave highest scores for lectures, followed by ICM practicals and textbooks. They gave the lowest scores for TBL followed by mediasite and PBL. Differences between students and faculty were statistically significant for lectures (P<.001), mediasite (P=.001), textbooks (P=.002), and PBL (P=.043).

Highlights

Over the last two decades a paradigm shift has occurred in the way medicine is taught and learnt
Medical schools have attempted to include an enormous amount of factual information into their preclinical curricula
The second trend is the development of active learning modalities in which the emphasis is not on fact knowledge and routine clinical skills, but on the development of reasoning and communication skills

Summary

Introduction

Over the last two decades a paradigm shift has occurred in the way medicine is taught and learnt. Medical schools have attempted to include an enormous amount of factual information into their preclinical curricula This has resulted in a perception that students are overwhelmed with information that is scarcely related to medical practice and in this sense irrelevant, and that they respond to this challenge by adopting a strategy of superficial fact learning rather than deep understanding. Alimoglu et al [3] report that in the first and second years of medical school in Turkey the students gave lowest ratings for lectures They were more satisfied with PBL, and most of all with practicals. The current study assesses differences in the opinions of students and faculty about 8 different teaching/learning modalities in the first 2 years of medical school. We examined the effects of demographics and MCAT (Medical College Admission Test) scores on preferences for learning modalities

Methods

2.87 BS knowledge PBL

Quantitative Results

Qualitative Results and Discussion