Effectiveness of teaching methods in a medical institute: perceptions of medical students to teaching aids

Objectives: To discover the most effective mode of teaching from the perspective of medical students and to analyse their preferences for various pedagogical aids. Methods: The qualitative, descriptive survey designed as a cross-sectional study was conducted at the King Edward Medical University, Lahore, from April to June 2011. A 25-item questionnaire regarding perceptions towards teaching aids was handed out to 500 undergraduate medical students and the answers were analysed using SPSS 17. Results: Of the 500 questionnaires, 8 (1.6%) were left out for being incomplete. The study sample size, as such, was 492 with a response rate of 98.4%. Out of the 492 students, 325 (66%) disagreed that the whole lecture should be delivered via PowerPoint slides. To understand complex concepts, 246 (50%) approved of animation based learning. For retaining and recalling facts, the combination of PowerPoint slides and animations was considered by 157 (32%)as most effective, while transparencies were considered to be the least effective (n=5; 1%). Regarding their attention span 357 (76%) students said they experienced the lowest attention span during Overhead Projector lectures. Irrespective of the method used, 225 (46%) students responded that visual aids of any sort increased their concentration a lot . For small groups, 283 (58%) students considered blackboards optimal, while for a large group, 243 (49%) students considered animations to be optimal. As far as combinations went, 291 (59%) preferred blackboard plus animations, 148 (30%) preferred blackboard plus PowerPoint.Conclusion: The combination of animations alongside blackboard was preferred over other combinations. Thesubjects wanted animations to be incorporated frequently into medical pedagogy, while overhead projectors wereclearly disliked by them.