The Effectiveness of a New Teaching Method in Life Science Education: Active Learning with Interactive Education / 医学教育

ABSTRACT

With innovations of “Courses of Study” in high school, the number of medical students who have not studied biology has increased rapidly and has created problems for medical education. Therefore, we started a course entitled “Science for a Healthy Life” for medical school freshmen. In traditional lectures, students often lose interest and start talking among themselves. For these reasons, we introduced new interactive education techniques into lectures for “Science for a Healthy Life.” Most students were interested in the visual aids and the performance of simple experiments. The students could discuss subjects and present results. With these new educational techniques, most student learned actively and efficiently. Many students learned by themselves with visual aids and reference books outside class, for example, after school and during summer and winter vacation. Finally, we found no significant difference in examination results for “Science for a Healthy Life” between students who had studied biology in high school or those who had not.