Comparison of individual and group learning in different laboratory settings among third year Medical Technology students

Background and Objectives@#To learn technical skills in Medical Technology schools, laboratory experiments are made individually or in groups. The nature of student participation and effect of group work in laboratory skills and attitudes of students have not been well studied. The study compared individual work, working in groups of three, and working in groups of six in terms of skills and attitudes toward learning, motivation to learn, responsibility, helpfulness, and teamwork. @*Methodology@#Experimental study was used that employed a counter-balance design among thirty-six thirdyear medical technology students who were instructed to learn laboratory skills in three settings and were rotated in six experiments. Performance examination and questionnaires were formulated by the researcher and used for gathering data. One-way ANOVA was used to determine the significant differences among practical exam scores of the three laboratory settings while Kruskal-Wallis H and Mann-Whitney U test were used to determine differences in rating scores of the attitude questionnaire. @*Results and Conclusions@#There were no significant differences in students' skills F(2, 213)=1.97, (p=.142) and in their attitude toward learning, helpfulness and teamwork among the laboratory settings. Students have higher motivation when working in groups (H(2)=14.413, p=.001) and assumed more responsibility when working alone than when working groups. When students worked individually or in groups of three, they perceived ending up doing most of the work.

The correlation between communication skills attitude and general self-efficacy among medical in-terns / 中华医学教育探索杂志

Objective This study is to explore the correlation between communication skills attitude and general self-efficacy among medical interns. Methods Medical intern students of three medical colleges in Shanghai were participated in this study, and questionnaire survey was conducted by cluster sampling of class. SPSS 19.0 was used to process descriptive analysis, t-test, F-test, correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis for data analysis. Result 600 questionnaires were handed out and 575 valid samples were collected. The effective rate was 95.83％. The mean score of positive and negative attitude dimension in CSAS were (51.880 ±7.003) and (31.550 ±5.839). The mean score of GSES was (26.230 ±4.820). A positive correlation was found between positive attitude of communication skills and general self-efficacy (r=0.165, P<0.01). Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that school, cognition about importance of com-munication skills and general self-efficacy significantly predicted positive attitude of communication skill.These three variables could explain 21.8％ of total variance and general self-efficacy can explained 2.1％after control other variables. Conclusion Communication skills attitudes of medical interns is positive on the whole. Enhancing their general self-efficacy is beneficial to improving their positive attitude towards communication skills.