Medical Students' Perception about Various Methods of Learning Physiology in a Medical College in Central India

ABSTRACT

Teaching methods have huge impact over appropriate acquisition of knowledge by the intendedrecipient.Physiology course in our college is taught through lectures, laboratory sessions, tutorials, all ofwhich are teacher centered; and student-led seminars. Aim of this study was to investigate students’perceptions of the value of varying academic methods on their learning of physiology. A faculty-baseddescriptive study was conducted. 150 Pro-formas were distributed & 127 were completed. Results showedthat 108 students (85%) believed that their absence from different academic activities could affect performance.Students perceived lectures as the most valuable academic activity (90.7%), whereas seminars by studentswere perceived as least important (18.5%). There was significant correlation between lectures attendanceand performance in examinations (P-0.008). 90% students thought that teacher involvement in tutorials wasessential. These results showed that in our course, students perceived teacher involvement as a keycomponent of the learning process.