Attitude and Perception of Pediatric Clerkship students in Yemen towards Team Based learning: A Preliminary Study

Introduction: Team based learning (TBL) is an innovative educational strategy that has been adopted by many medical schools all over the world. It has the advantage of active learning, critical thinking where the students learn to collaborate and communicate with one another in a single large classroom. In this study we explored pediatric clerkship students’ perceptions and attitudes regarding team based learning at University of Sciences and Technology/Yemen with a view to build in novations and improvements on teaching methods. Methods: A pilot descriptive cross-sectional study involved thirty seven pediatric clerkship female medical students attended two hours session in May 2013 at University of Sciences Technology/college of medicine in Sana’s/Yemen. The session was converted from didactic into TBL one. The students participated in response to 14 statements at the end of the session. The internal consistency of the questionnaire items was determined by Cronbach’s alpha. Student perceptions were assessed using a 5-point Likert scale with a score of five being strongly agree. Collected Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 20). Results: all the 37 female students constituting the attending group responded. Internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) of the 14 items was 0.931. Students’ perceived TBL tutorial positively with about 94% of students agreed of positive impact of the session on their learning, and 92% agreed that the session helped them to work and learn in a team. Lower score of 62% were given to whether the session promoted understanding rather than memorization, and 60% of the students agreed of the achievement of learning objectives through TBL session. Conclusions: Clerkship Students’ evaluations indicated that Team Based Learning is a welcome alternative to the didactic lecture. It adds ongoing evidence suggesting the effectiveness of TBL as an instructional technique that promote student engagement and learning in teams.