ABSTRACT
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.
ABSTRACT
Sleep is an active, repetitive and reversible state of perceptual disengagement from the environment including unresponsiveness to it. Adequate sleep is extremely important for healthiness. But sleep loss is a remarkable problem in modern society. The objective of this study was to investigate the sleep pattern and its association with students’ academic performance. It was a cross sectional study conducted among 4th year UKM undergraduate medical students of session 2011-2012. Inclusive of all 234 registered 4th year students was selected for this study. A standard questionnaire that contained questions on demography, sleep habits, academic performance and ideal sleep was used to collect data. Out of 234 students, 186 were responded giving a response rate of 79.5% where 73% were female and 69% resided in-campus. Including weekdays and weekends averagely, 56.2% respondents slept for 6-8 hours, 29.1% for <6 hours and 14.7% slept for >8 hours. An average of 53.35% respondents had in-frequent day-nap, 34.9% frequent and 11.75% had no day-nap at all. Respondents who slept >6 hours were observed to have significantly higher academic performance. It is concluded that, people need to understand the role of sleep and have to take adequate sleep of 6-8 hours per day for health and wellbeing.
ABSTRACT
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.
ABSTRACT
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.