Advan. Physiol. Edu. 29: 183, 2005;
doi:10.1152/advan.00006.2005
1043-4046/05 $8.00
ADV PHYSIOL EDUC 29:183, 2005
© 2005 American Physiological Society
ILLUMINATIONS
MERIT-BASED REARRANGEMENT OF STUDENTS FOR BETTER INTERACTIONS
Satheesha Nayak,
K. Ramnarayan,
S. N. Somayaji and
Seetharama Bhat
Melaka Manipal Medical College, Manipal Campus
Madhav Nagar, Manipal, Udupi District
Karnataka State 576 104, India
E-mail: nayaksathish{at}yahoo.com
We at Melaka Manipal Medical College (Manipal campus) have an integrated curriculum. The maximum student enrollment is 150 students per admission. However, the number of students per class varies from 125 to 150 students per year. The students joining the program have no university experience. They join this program after completing high school. In the first year, the students learn Anatomy, Physiology, and Biochemistry. The curriculum includes lectures, practical classes, and tutorials. The class of 150 students is divided into smaller groups of 25 students per group for dissections of cadavers and for small group tutorials. Earlier, the grouping was conducted according to the students' roll numbers. This method of grouping presented several concerns. For example, in each group, some students dominated all of the interactions. These students dominated all of the interactions and activities. In this situation, these students answered most of the questions, performed most of the dissections of the cadavers, and dominated the majority of the activity. There were a few students who did not show much motivation. They were shy to answer questions and often stood silently behind others during dissections. Their interactions with their peers as well as their tutors were poor. To overcome this problem, and to improve student-student and student-teacher interactions, we rearranged the groups according to the students' academic performance. Specifically, the students were ranked based on their scores on all exams up to the midterm. Group 1 included the academically weakest students, and group 6 had the academically strongest students. Groups 1 and 2 included many of the students who stood away from the dissection table and remained silent during small group discussions. After the redistribution, we observed better interactions among the members of the groups. Each group contained students of almost equal understanding of the subject. With this redistribution, tutoring was more effective as tutors taught students who were at almost the same level. The academically weak students were encouraged to interact with their group members and to dissect the cadaver. The redistribution helped these students to overcome their reluctance to answer questions during the tutorials as all the members of the group were of the same level. Once this system was introduced, the students knew their strengths and weaknesses and they started interacting with their peers and teachers better, and the scores improved in the subsequent examinations. For example, the mean scores in the block exams were 79.5 ± 1.83 before and 97.1 ± 1.63 after the redistribution (P = 0.0001). A questionnaire was given to the students to understand their opinions of the redistributions. Only 20% of the students did not like the redistribution. However, the 20% agreed that there was an improvement in their examination scores. This method redistribution caused an uneasiness; however, it did improve exam performance.
Copyright © 2005 by the American Physiological Society.
