“Flipped Classroom” teaching-learning method in medical biochemistry 1st professional MBBS students

ABSTRACT

Background: The flipped classroom is an educational model in which the standard lecture and homework elements of a course are “reversed” or “flipped.” In the current scenario, the new teaching-learning (T-L) method like flipped classroom is an essential requirement due to shifting in medical education from teacher-centric to student-centric as a consequence of the recent changes in medical education called “Competency-Based Medical Education.” The advantage of this teaching-learning method is to motivate students for self-directed learning and provides an opportunity for students to read/view course-related material at their own pace and on their own time before the actual class. Change in T-L method in medical biochemistry is extremely important since 1st Professional MBBS students considered it as tiresome and boring subject and give it least priority in all the subjects of 1st Professional MBBS course. Aim and Objectives: The main objective of this study is to introduce “Flipped Classroom” as an innovative teaching-learning method in medical biochemistry. Materials and Methods: For this study, 76 students were in-rolled and randomly divided them into two equal groups. Two topics from the medical biochemistry were selected, each group given an equal chance to learn by each method, at the end of teaching-learning the MCQ test was conducted and feedback from the student was collected. Results: In topics, the group learned the topic by flipped classroom scored more marks than the other group. The mean score of students, after the didactic lecture and flipped-classroom irrespective of the topic, were 4.43 and 5.39 marks, respectively (P < 0.001). Conclusion: The flipped-classroom method was found useful to improve the score of the 1st Professional MBBS students in medical biochemistry subject and facilitate them to understand the topic more clearly than the didactic lecture.