Preparedness of the teachers for Team-Based Learning: Liking, disliking and suggestions of faculty.

Faculty development is an integral part of institutional development. This paper describes liking, disliking and suggestions of faculty members on a 2-days Team-Based Learning faculty training workshop, where 39 faculty members were attended. Participants liked the lively and informal discussions through which they got a new technique to teach students more interactively. However, they disliked too short demonstration and short notification given them to read pre-assigned material and suggested more workshops with more practical demonstration before its implementation. Faculty developers should address the needs of the faculty while organizing developmental workshop aimed to link between theory and practice for a sustainable development.

Educational Environment in a Multicultural Society to Meet the Challenges of Diversity.

Educators in a multicultural-environment face complex-tasks in teaching for diversity. The objective of this study was to determine the educational environment in a Malaysian medical school, aimed to face the diversity. This cross-sectional study was conducted utilising “Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure”, a validated instrument that contained 50 items rated 0-4 with a maximum 200 score under five sub-scales. Sub-scales were perceptions of: learning, teacher, academic-self, atmosphere and social-self. Respondents were 193 year-5 medical students of session 2011-2012, comprised of Malays, Chinese, Indians and Other ethnic-group. The overall mean score perceived by all ethnicity was 130/200 (65%). All sub-scales perceived >60% scores except social-self and atmosphere. The social-self sub-scale perceived the lowest score (53.57%) by the Other ethnic group while interestingly social-self also perceived highest (75%) by the Indians. Atmosphere sub-scale perceived a score of 58.33% by Other ethnic-group. Positive perceptions of educational enviornment among the students of diverse ethnicity reflects that educational environment at the medical school is well equiped to meet the challenges of diversity. However, there is opportunity to increase further positivity in general and social-self and atmosphere sub-scales in particular. Educators in a multicultural-environment must work to avoid monocultural instructional methodoligies to promote a multicultrul society.

Challenges of Problem Based Learning.

Background: The cornerstone of problem-based learning (PBL) tutoring is its facilitation skills and is vital to student learning. PBL is a major component in the undergraduate medical curriculum at the Univeristi Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). Objectives: The objective of this study was to identify the knowledge, attitudes and skills of PBL tutors of different status and backgrounds. Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out on 55 tutors with medical and non-medical backgrounds, of various academic positions, who conducted 94 tutorials. Respondents were 240 semester-1, year-1, UKM medical students of the academic session of 2007-2008. Data was collected at the end of last session of each PBL case tutorial, utilizing an evaluation form. Results: The majority of tutors possessed knowledge on PBL process and showed positive attitudes towards students learning. Facilitation skills varied among the tutors. However, no significant difference was found between tutors of medical and non-medical backgrounds. Conclusion: Problem processing or facilitation is a challenging task. This also depends on problem structure or designing of the problem. Every PBL tutor irrespective of their background and status must have adequate training on PBL facilitation skills and designing of problem based on critical evaluation of educational theory.