Students' perceived value of physiology course activities in a Sudanese medical faculty

Abstract

The physiology course in our department consists of lectures, laboratory sessions, and tutorials, all of which are teacher centered, as well as student-led seminars. The overall aim of this project was to investigate student perceptions of the value of varying academic activities on their learning of physiology. A faculty-based descriptive study was conducted at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of Alneelain University (Khartoum, Sudan). Questionnaires (150 total) were distributed to students from the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, and Physiotherapy; 127 questionnaires were completed and returned. The results showed that 108 students (85%) believed that their absence from different academic activities could affect their performance. Students perceived lectures as the most valuable academic activity (90.7%), whereas seminars presented by students were perceived as the least important activity (18.5%). There was a significant correlation between lectures attendance and their performance in examinations (P = 0.008). Ninety percent of the students thought that teacher involvement in tutorials was essential and that lectures were useful to understand certain topics. These results showed that in our course, students perceived teacher involvement as a key component of the educational process.