Undergraduate Medical Students’ Attitude And Preferences Toward Traditional Lecture Versus Informal Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is one of the active learning techniques. There are three commonly recognized types of cooperative learning groups, namely informal cooperative learning (ICL), formal cooperative learning and cooperative base groups. There is no study been done on ICL which relate to radiology teaching. The results of this study will provide evidence to support either traditional lecture (TL) or ICL is a more suitable teaching method for radiology teaching. This study was aimed to compare students’ attitude and preference towards TL versus ICL in radiology teaching. This interventional study had been conducted among 52 third year Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) students at Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin. They underwent both TL and ICL methods during eleven radiology lectures in classroom setting from September 2013 until July 2014. Subsequently, multiple items questionnaires regarding students’ attitude and preferences towards TL and ICL were administered. These questionnaires had undergone validation process and revealed excellent internal consistency with Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.90, 0.92 and 0.88 respectively. The mean total attitude score towards informal cooperative learning was (90.90) (SD: 11.73) significantly higher than the score for traditional lecture 85.46 (SD: 11.82) (p= 0.012). Students showed preference in ICL significantly in six domains. These domains were active involvement in the class, promotion of good rapport among classmates, getting an opportunity to help others, facilitation of understanding difficult materials, improvement of communication skills, opportunity for training to be a good leader and follower, and opportunity for enabling to participate in sharing information, making decision and problem solving. ICL method is recommended in radiology teaching because students demonstrated better students’ attitude and preferences in the learning sessions as compared to TL.

Normalised MRI Volumetry of the Hippocampus among Normal Malay Children and Adolescents

Background: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a noninvasive method for determining brain morphology and volumetry. Hippocampal volume changes are observed in conjunction with several diseases. This study aimed to determine the normalised volume of the hippocampus in normal Malay children and adolescents. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study performed from January 2009 to June 2010. Brain and temporal lobe MRI was performed for 81 healthy normal Malay individuals aged 7–18 years. Manual volumetry was performed. The hippocampal volumes were normalised with the total intracranial volume. Results: The original right, left, and total hippocampal volumes (mean and standard deviation) were 3.05 (0.48) cm3, 2.89 (0.44) cm3, and 5.94 (0.90) cm3, respectively. Normalised hippocampal volumes for the right, left, and total volume were 3.05 (0.41) cm3, 2.89 (0.41) cm3, and 5.94 (0.79) cm3, respectively. Pearson’s correlation coefficient for the right and left hippocampal volumes with intracranial volume were 0.514 and 0.413, respectively (P < 0.001). Both the original and normalised hippocampal volumes of the right hippocampus were significantly larger than those of the left (P < 0.001). Conclusion: This is a data set for the local Malay paediatric population. There was no significant difference between the actual and normalised values of hippocampal volume in our study.