Student's Perspective: Should Interactive or Non-Interactive Lectures be given to Medical and Dental Students?

In the complex setting of a medical/dental school it becomes essential to utilize an approach to teaching and learning that is best suited to the needs of the students. For productive learning, teaching should facilitate development of logical approaches to a problem and to highlight especially those points which appear critical for students to understand. A cross-sectional pilot study was carried out at Karachi Medical and Dental College to understand the perception of medical students about the current methods of teaching, interactive sessions in lecture and also to identify the techniques, best suited in delivering the knowledge to students. Study participants included third year, fourth year and fifth year M.B.B.S students. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect the information. SPSS version 16 was used for analysis of data. A total of 93 students participated in the study. 92.5% students believed lectures given to them are relevant and informative. About 87.1% students felt, lectures are beneficial before reading the topic from book. Approximately 86.0% of students preferred lectures to be interactive. The most preferred modality of teaching aid was found to be chalk-board, preferred by 73.1% students. The findings of pilot study suggested that a combination of conventional teaching methods with other methods such as, Animations, which is a 3D photographic model, PBL (Problem Based Learning) in which students learn about a subject through the experience of solving an open-ended problem. Students learn both thinking strategies and domain knowledge, Post-test in which students are evaluated for knowledge, they grasp after completion of lecture, often used in conjunction with a pretest to measure their achievement and the effectiveness of the lecture, and Doctor-Patient counseling sessions could be an effective way of teaching theory and clinical skills.