THE STUDY OF STUDENTS’ PREFERENCES FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS
Authors: Kaskova L.F. , Morgun N.A. , Artemiev A.V. , Vashchenko I.Yu. , Chupryna L.F. , Yanko N.V. , Akzhytova G.O. 
Published: June 2022

Relevance. Currently one of the most problems for academic teaching staff members at the higher medical education institutions is the improvement of motivation, quality of education, and professional level of higher education students, studying according to the educational program of the second (master’s) level of higher education, the field of knowledge 22 Healthcare, the specialty 221 Dentistry, educational qualification the Master of Dentistry. The international students of Poltava State Medical University (PSMU) with the English form of education are the cohort with a wide range of various cultures, experience, personalities, and preferences and studying styles. It is necessary to take into account for the students’ educational needs aimed to strengthen of their motivation and learning outcomes.

Methods and Material. To determine the students’ preferences regarding the learning strategies, we have developed a questionnaire in the English and the Ukrainian languages for monitoring. The first (A1) study group consists of 108 PSMU students of the 4th-5th year of study at the Dental Faculty with the English form of education. The second (A2) study group involves 50 students, citizens of Ukraine. The questionnaire has been composed of three sections. The first section contains the data on the student’s gender. The second part has been devoted to the organization of a lecture (the desired beginning of the lecture and its duration). The third section has been based on personal survey questions about the methodology of the lecture conduct: the multimedia presentation of the lecture has been made by the PowerPoint software, which was conducted by the option I – offline, the option II – online without providing a methodical lecture material in advance, and the option III – the online lecture with the provision of the material. The questions were answered by the students according to the 3-point Likert scale (1 person– agree, 2 persons – neutral, 3 persons – do not agree. The results were processed with MS Excel and analyzed by the online calculator using the Chi-square test.

Results and Discussion. The study involved 108 PSMU international students of the English form of studying; there were 70 males (64.8%) and 38 females (35.2 %) among them.

Based on the resulting data, we propose to take into account the opinion of international students with the English form of studying. They are to give preference to later time for lectures during the drawing up the schedule of lectures by the Department of Affairs, Education and research, and to introduce a flexible scale of lecture time depending on the semesters and the year of study.

Our sresearch concerning the duration of lectures for the international students proved the priority advantage of a 40-minute micro-lecture. The preference has been given to a 30 and 50-minute lecture.

Based on the results we propose to take into account the opinion of international students with the English form of studying who prefer the later time for lectures. The obtained results on the provision of premultimedia materials of lectures on the university’s website, in our opinion, allow international students to

master the material in their free time, which improves the perception of lecture material during the lecture presentation, and use this material during practical classes and preparation for the semester session.

Conclusions. Our studies have demonstrated that the optimal time of micro-lecture is 40 minutes, which completely coincides with the duration of the lecture at PSMU. Tutors-dentists should take into account the time of the day when they plan to conduct a lecture in accordance with the semester schedule for students of the 4th and 5th years of study. The survey shows that providing students with a complete informational lecture block in the form of PowerPoint presentations in advance, before the scheduled lecture, significantly improves the perception of the lecture.

Preliminary acquaintance with the methodological material of the lecture allows ensure better acquisition of the material during the online lecture, and later the students have the possibility to prepare for a practical class and session.