Use of interactive teaching –Learning approaches in anatomy

Introduction: Understanding of anatomy is fundamental for clinical practice; Anatomy must be taught and learnt within a context that is clinically meaningful and related to the competencies required by new medical graduates so that students understand its relevance to their future practice. Hence in this study we decided to implement interactive clinical anatomy lecture. Aim: To assess the impact of the interactive teaching learning methods on student cognitive outcomes and to evaluate the perceptions of students about interactive teaching learning approach. Materials and Methods: Faculty members were sensitized. The study was approved by institutional Ethics Committee. Written informed consent was taken from students. The anatomy knowledge was evaluated by a pre-test and post-test (10 MCQ), which were designed based on the learning objectives of the sessions. Student’s perception was evaluated through prevalidated questionnaires. The topic was chosen for interactive sessions namely “Venous drainage of lower limb” and we were including video clips and demonstration of Trendelenburg test in this session. Students had learned this topic already during didactic lecture as a part of routine timetable. The pre-test and post-test results of the study group were compared using ‘paired t’ test. Students feedback was determined by analysis of questionnaires based on 5 point Likert scale. Results: Total participants were 150. The mean score of pretest and posttest were 3.7 and 4.2 respectively. Standard deviation for pretest and posttest were 1.52 and 1.51 respectively. t value of this study was 7.99 and P value was 0.0000. Here P value is less than 0.001, it shows the highly significant difference between the mean of pretest and posttest score. It indicates definite improvement in the knowledge of students. In the prevalidated feedback questionnaires, 64.7% students had agreed that session was better than didactic lecture and 82.7% students had agreed that it was more effective in fulfilling learning objective. 70.7% students wanted the need to conduct more such sessions on the other topics also. All faculties agreed that this method increases student interest in learning and better understand clinical aspects of anatomy. However faculties believed that this method requires planning, extra effort, infrastructure and also some training. Discussion: Introducing clinical knowledge in interactive teaching is beneficial in assessment also, it can lead to improvement in anatomy scores. Educational research has shown that students who are actively involved in the learning activity will learn more than students who are passive recipients. Learning and its retention is facilitated when the subject matter of the topic is linked to authentic contexts since the students experience the essentiality of knowing the topic for future clinical practice. Conclusion: This study determined that the interactive and engaging learning strategy can be used as an effective learning tool in anatomy. So there was not only significant improvement in anatomy knowledge with its applied aspects but also it helps to improve students communication.