Effective physiology teaching methods: from the perspective of first year MBBS students.

BACKGROUND: Students who took admission in first year MBBS course used to study physiology, anatomy and biochemistry for one and half years. Since a decade the first year course duration was reduced to one year unaltering the syllabus in the three basic subjects. So students are focusing on the easy ways to clear the university exams by accepting the concise books, which is dampening the real quality of the subject knowledge. This study is aimed at understanding the best methods of physiology teaching in the lecture gallery, from the student's perspective. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The present study was undertaken at a private medical college in southern part of India in Telangana state, on 100 students who took admission in first year MBBS course, in the academic year 2015-2016. Out of 100, 36 are boys and 64 are girl students. Distributed a question paper which is having 2 sets of questions. First question is having three statements regarding the teaching methods namely; chalk and blackboard teaching, over head projection teaching and power point teaching. Students were asked to choose the best statement which they prefer. Second question is consisting of combination of teaching methods and they are; chalk and blackboard with over head projection teaching method, chalk and blackboard with power point presentation. Again the students were asked to choose one of the 2 statements in 2nd question. RESULTS: Students preference of teaching methods for understanding of physiology in percentage; chalk and blackboard-54, over head projection teaching-4, power point presentation-32, chalk and blackboard with over head projection-26, chalk and blackboard with power point presentation-64. CONCLUSION: Majority of the students are in favor of a combination of chalk and blackboard with power point presentation for better understanding of physiology, next is chalk and blackboard teaching alone.