Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, 1873 Rama IV Road, Pathumwan, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand.
BMC Med Educ. 2021 Jan 9;21(1):43. doi: 10.1186/s12909-020-02468-9.
Pre-clerkship medical curriculums consist of a series of organ system-based courses and lectures but often lack an integration between organ systems. Such integration could be beneficial for clerkship years and students' future career. Hence, we aimed to share our process of organising an integrative teaching approach in a large class of pre-clerkship medical students and to reflect the students' perspective toward the teaching process in this observational study. In addition, we tested effectiveness of this integrative approach compared with the traditional teaching (lecture).
We organised a two-dimensional (2D)-integrative teaching for 309 students in selected topics of cardiovascular physiology of the medical curriculum of the Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. The first dimension of integration is the incorporation of physiology of other organ systems into the cardiovascular physiology class. The second is the integration of multiple teaching methods and strategies, including small group discussion, student presentation, wrap-up, quiz, and question-and-answer sessions. Unless opting out, students evaluated this integrative teaching by filling in a questionnaire. The summative scores were also used to determine their comprehensive understandings of the content.
The course evaluation showed that most students (81.9-91.2%) had positive attitudes toward all organised sessions, i.e. this teaching method helps promote their basic and applied physiology knowledge, critical thinking, information searching, presentation, and teamwork skills. In general, students at all performance levels attained higher scores in the summative exam for the 2D-integrative-class-relevant questions (74.4±16.1%) than for the lecture-pertinent questions (65.2±13.6%).
In a large class size of pre-clerkship students, 2D-integrative teaching strategies with careful planning and preparation can be successfully implemented, based on positive attitudes and relatively high summative scores of students in this study. Hence, this comprehensive teaching could be incorporated in current medical curriculums, particularly for the complex learning topics.
医学预科课程由一系列基于器官系统的课程和讲座组成,但通常缺乏器官系统之间的整合。这种整合对实习年和学生未来的职业发展可能是有益的。因此,我们旨在分享我们在一大群医学预科学生中组织一种综合性教学方法的过程,并在这项观察性研究中反映学生对教学过程的看法。此外,我们测试了这种综合方法与传统教学(讲座)相比的有效性。
我们在泰国朱拉隆功大学医学院的医学课程中选择了心血管生理学的几个主题,为 309 名学生组织了二维(2D)综合教学。整合的第一个维度是将其他器官系统的生理学纳入心血管生理学课程。第二个是整合多种教学方法和策略,包括小组讨论、学生演讲、总结、测验和问答环节。除非选择退出,否则学生通过填写问卷来评估这种综合教学。综合成绩也用于确定他们对内容的全面理解。
课程评估显示,大多数学生(81.9-91.2%)对所有组织的课程都持积极态度,即这种教学方法有助于提高他们的基础和应用生理学知识、批判性思维、信息搜索、演讲和团队合作技能。总的来说,所有表现水平的学生在 2D 综合课程相关问题的总结考试中得分(74.4±16.1%)高于讲座相关问题的得分(65.2±13.6%)。
在医学预科学生的大班中,基于学生在这项研究中的积极态度和相对较高的总结分数,可以成功实施 2D 综合教学策略,需要精心规划和准备。因此,这种综合性教学可以纳入当前的医学课程,特别是对于复杂的学习主题。