|
 
 |
| ORIGINAL ARTICLE |
|
| Year : 2017 | Volume
: 6
| Issue : 10 | Page : 41-44 |
|
Impact of innovative pedagogical teaching methods on students' academic performance
Anjali Mahajan, Kanica Kaushal
Department of Community Medicine, Indira Gandhi Medical College, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India
| Date of Web Publication | 13-Feb-2018 |
Correspondence Address:
Kanica Kaushal
Department of Community Medicine, Indira Gandhi Medical College, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/2250-9658.225332
Background: Microteaching techniques uses various interactive and multimodal strategies to create a more engaging classroom setting compared to the traditional didactic lecturing methods. The primary objective of this study was to assess the impact of innovative pedagogical teaching methods on students' academic performance. Subjects and Methods: It was a cross-sectional interventional study conducted among seventy students of basic and post basic B.Sc. Nursing course. Seventy students were evaluated for effectiveness of two different teaching techniques on students' performance over a series of five lectures; each lecture being divided into two sessions. The first session involved delivering the lecture with the aid of power point presentation only. The second session consisted of delivering the lecture using various interactive teaching techniques. At the end of five lectures, feedback was taken from students regarding the quality of lectures. Results: The quantitative analysis showed that the mean posttest scores obtained from the students were significantly higher than the pretest scores in all the five sessions. The qualitative assessment of the study based on feedback received from the students' also pointed toward better attainment of knowledge and greater satisfaction levels. Conclusion: It is mandatory to inculcate interactive learning into regular classroom teaching to have better understanding.
Keywords: Didactic, microteaching, pedagogical, Socratic
How to cite this article:
Mahajan A, Kaushal K. Impact of innovative pedagogical teaching methods on students' academic performance. N Niger J Clin Res 2017;6:41-4 |
| Introduction | |  |
Education had a deep impact on the upliftment and advancement of the early society and overall individual development. Early education in India commenced under the supervision of a guru. The current system of education, with its Western style and content, was introduced and founded by the British. Traditional structures were not recognized by the British government and have been on the decline since.[1]
Teaching or tutoring refers to a set of actions and activities which are aimed at imparting knowledge to the learner. The improvement observed in student outcome reflects on the quality of teaching. The conventional teaching methods are unilateral and are not interactive. The relationship between teaching and learning is mutual, simultaneous, and reciprocal. Since ages, teachers have resorted to traditional methods of teaching and not much innovation is sought for. The objective of tutoring and mentoring needs to be redefined in the modern era. Nowadays, students seek knowledge through the application of innovative methods wherein learning becomes a joyful, experimental, and thought-provoking process. Medical teachers are primarily doctors and not teachers per se. However, they are required to indulge in teaching and are expected to produce quality doctors through their effective teaching skills. Hence, they are under constant pressure of improving on their teaching skills.
Apart from the chalk and talk and traditional textbook use, teachers nowadays weigh the motivational component of the topic along with the subject content.
Broadly, there are two types of teaching methods – the traditional one-way teaching, i.e., Didactic method which is a teacher-centered classroom setting where students are passive listeners. This type of teaching does not entertain interactions with the student; instead, it focuses on presenting factual content of the subject matter. Another method is the contemporary two-way teaching (Socratic method) wherein rather than dictating a didactic lecture, students are encouraged to participate and interact with the teachers by asking questions and giving feedback regarding the lecture delivered. It drives interactivity and students are revived from their passivity of mere listening to being attentive and engaged; which are the two prerequisites for effective learning.
To further consolidate the effects of this Socratic method, microteaching techniques are being introduced to the teachers. Microteaching is a teacher training technique which employs real teaching situation for developing skills and helps to get deeper knowledge regarding the art of teaching. This Stanford technique involved the steps of “plan, teach, observe, re-plan, re-teach, and re-observe.”[2]
Introducing interactive techniques of teaching in medical education can promote learner participation and as a result can lead to better learning.
The primary objective of this study was to assess the impact of innovative pedagogical teaching methods on students' academic performance. The present study allowed a direct comparison of the Socratic lecturing versus didactic lecturing methods with the same student body.
| Subjects and Methods | | |
It was a cross-sectional interventional study conducted among seventy students of basic and post basic B. Sc. Nursing course. The study was completed at the Sister Nivedita Nursing College, Shimla. The author delivered the following five lectures (1/week over a period of 1 month) on “Research Methodology” each of 1 h duration.
- Types of data and data presentation
- Measures of central tendency and dispersion
- Data collection techniques
- Sampling techniques
- Statistical tests.
The weekly single lecture was divided into two sessions. The first session involved delivering the conventional didactic lecture with the aid of power point presentation only. Herein, students received the information passively (one-way teaching), and no questions were addressed during the lecture.
After the end of Session I, students were given questionnaire of 10–15 questions regarding the session to assess their knowledge on the topic. Appropriate time was given depending on the type of lecture and level of difficulty of the questions.
The second session involved various interactive teaching techniques which involved the class as a whole making it a two-way process (Socratic method). In addition to the lecture and power point presentation as was used in the first session, the following microteaching techniques were employed:
- Chalk and talk method: The chalk lends the visual component along with other visual aids
- Group dynamics: The students were divided into groups (5–10 students each) and were made to solve the exercises relevant for the topic
- Think break: Make the students guess the answers by allowing around 20 s to think about the problem before the author went on to explain
- Target-oriented approach: Clear the objectives of the relevant topic at the start of the presentation and connecting each part of the lecture with what the student should be able to do at the end of the same
- Pass on the chalk: The students were made to solve the relevant exercises on the board, and they were made to pass on the chalk to colleague of their choice
- Word of the day: At the end of the lecture, the most important take-home messages were highlighted.
Each session had five steps to reinforce the previous session's material: recall it, summarize it, phrase a remaining question, connect it to the class as a whole, and comment on that class session.
After the end of Session II, students were given the same questionnaire again for the respective session to see the difference in the scores if any.
All the five sessions were conducted as per the above protocol resulting in five pretest questionnaires and five posttest questionnaires to evaluate.
The quantitative analysis was done using statistical software SPSS version 17.0 (IBM). Means and standard deviation of the pre- and posttest scores were calculated. Kolmogorov–Smirnov test with Lilliefors significance correction and Shapiro–Wilk statistics were applied to check for the normality of difference between the mean pretest and posttest scores. The difference was found to be nonnormal as P < 0.01. Therefore, Wilcoxon signed-ranks test (a nonparametric test) was applied to see the difference between the mean pre- and post-test scores. P < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.
The qualitative assessment of the study was done at the end of five sessions on the basis of feedback forms filled by the students. The authors received feedback from all the students which reflected on the quality of the lectures delivered. The lectures were assessed on the following aspects:
- Set induction
- Planning (organized and relevant content matter)
- Presentation
- Pupil participation (allowing questions, answering questions, and rewarding students)
- Use of audiovisual aids (AVs) and closure (use of AV aids and proper winding up of lecture).
| Results | | |
[Table 1] shows that the mean posttest scores obtained from the students were higher than the pretest scores in all the five sessions. | Table 1: Comparison of the mean posttest scores with the pretest scores in five sessions
Click here to view |
[Table 2] shows that the difference between pre- and post-test scores was statistically significant with P < 0.01 in each of the five sessions of the study.
The feedback received from the students (in predesigned written format) highlighted on the salient features of the Socratic method of teaching which are amiss in conventional lectures. These findings pointed out that the former method quintessentially needs to be incorporated in modern teaching as it breaks the monotony and replaces the tedium of one-way lecture by bringing about variation in its pace.
Few apparent points appeared from student feedback are as follows:
- 60 students (85.7%) said that the author aroused interest in the beginning by relating to the previous learning, questioning, and specified the objectives of presentation beforehand
- 68 students (97.1%) believed that the author had organized the teaching material in a logical sequence and had used relevant content matter
- All of them mentioned that the pace of presentation by the author was acceptable and main ideas were illustrated with the help of examples and admitted that author gave full time to students for asking questions if any and that usage of AV aids were amalgamated properly with the relevant topic.
| Discussion | | |
Microteaching is an umbrella term for various techniques; few may be enumerated as engaging lectures, broken lectures (students are given short periods of lecture followed by “breaks” that may consist of 1-min papers, problem sets, brainstorming sessions, or open discussions), interactive lectures, instructor storytelling, recall, summarize, question, connect, and comment, etc. The purpose of using these study techniques is to keep students engaged in the lecture that increases student performance, motivating them to learn, and enhancing effective skills.[3]
In the present study, the average scores of the students obtained after the conventional lecture method were significantly lower than the scores obtained after structured interactive lecture method. This finding clearly highlights the greater effectiveness of the latter in imparting better knowledge to the students. Furthermore, this method was found to generate more interest, required greater involvement, and raised curiosity among the students hence simplifying the topic.
A similar finding has been reported by Chilwant in a study of comparison of two teaching methods, structured interactive lectures, and conventional lectures, in which 76% students were willing to replace conventional lectures with interactive lectures.[4] It has been clearly demonstrated by the educational research that students who are actively involved in the learning activity will learn more than students who are passive recipients of knowledge.[5] Papanna et al. suggested that a combination of traditional methods with other methods such as problem-based learning (PBL), video lectures, and mannequins could be an effective way of teaching theory and clinical skills.[6] Ralph concluded that educators filling any mentorship position should not only add microteaching to their pedagogical repertoire, but that they should strive to apply it appropriately to help their protégés acquire their particular professional/occupational knowledge, skills, and dispositions.[7]
All these studies refute the past notion which backed the textbook-as-Bible” approach where teachers felt a sense of control over content; freed themselves of the responsibility for more creative and effective planning has been superseded by the greater effectiveness of interactive learning in imparting better knowledge to the students.[8]
Similarly, Chilwant quoted students saying that their retention of topic was increased after the interactive method and they feel that their performance in theory and practical examination will get improved by this method.[4]
Tofade et al. had emphasized on the effective use of questions as a teaching tool. Teachers ask questions to help students uncover what has been learned and to generate discussion and interaction. However, sometimes an overuse of questioning may discourage students from participating in discussions as they begin to feel interrogated.[9] In the present study, bidirectional questioning approach was adopted wherein the authors made an effort to encourage the students to actively participate in the lecture by allowing them to pose questions on all aspects of the study topic and vice versa.
Another concept emerging is that of PBL. Several potential advantages for students' learning are claimed for PBL. Students with PBL curricula are better motivated; better problem solvers and self-directed learners; better in recalling information; better able to integrate basic science knowledge into the solutions of clinical problems.[10] As compared to the conventional teaching where students are offered information by teachers and few opportunities are given to them to identify their own learning needs or reflect collectively on their learning experience. Further, if the outcomes are unfavorable, the blame lies with the student, for lack of skills or motivation. With the advent of PBL, the responsibilities of teachers include: encouraging critical thinking; fostering self-directed learning and curiosity; monitoring group progress; and creating a learning environment that stimulates all members in the group, generates deep understanding, and promotes teamwork.[11]
Last, needs assessment was done to identify “gaps” in the current situation that need to be filled to make improvements and provide quality teaching. Gaps were identified; prioritized and following areas were identified to act on to fulfill the needs:
- How can students be activated?
- How can interactive learning processes be initiated?
- How can more responses on the learning outcome be obtained from students?
- How to make effective usage of media while teaching?
- How to bring about variation in teaching process to make classroom experience more interesting and effective?
| Conclusion | | |
At the end, it can be concluded that interactive lecturing is better than the conventional way of teaching. The point is to inculcate the former method into regular classroom teaching to have better understanding and concept of the relevant topic. This necessitates the development of standards for a set pattern of teaching methods guidelines for different streams and areas of education (including medical education) to maintain constant quality of teaching; which is said to be operational if it leads to positive effect on student learning and development through a combination of content mastery, command of a broad set of pedagogic skills, and communication/interpersonal skills.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
| References | | |
| 1. | |
| 2. | Remesh A. Microteaching, an efficient technique for learning effective teaching. J Res Med Sci 2013;18:158-63.  |
| 3. | |
| 4. | Chilwant KS. Comparison of two teaching methods, structured interactive lectures and conventional lectures. Biomed Res 2012;23:363-6. |
| 5. | Butler JA. Use of teaching methods within the lecture format. Med Teach 1992;14:11-25. |
| 6. | Papanna KM, Kulkarni V, Tanvi D, Lakshmi V, Kriti L, Unnikrishnan B, et al. Perceptions and preferences of medical students regarding teaching methods in a Medical College, Mangalore India. Afr Health Sci 2013;13:808-13. |
| 7. | Ralph EG. The effectiveness of microteaching: Five years' findings. Int J Humanit Soc Sci Educ 2014;1:17-28. |
| 8. | |
| 9. | Tofade T, Elsner J, Haines ST. Best practice strategies for effective use of questions as a teaching tool. Am J Pharm Educ 2013;77:155. |
| 10. | Norman GR, Schmidt HG. The psychological basis of problem-based learning: a review of the evidence. Acad Med 1992;67:557-65. |
| 11. | Azer SA. The qualities of a good teacher: how can they be acquired and sustained? J R Soc Med 2005;98:67-9. |
[Table 1], [Table 2]
|
Search Pubmed for