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Abstract

Background: Instructional strategies employed for the teaching of pathology traditionally include lectures, demonstrations, practical classes; problem based learning and clinico-pathological conference. Recently team based learning (TBL) as an instructional strategy has gained acceptance in a variety of undergraduate medical courses. TBL is a student centred instructional strategy providing students with an opportunity to apply their knowledge through a series of activities comprising of individual work, team work and problem solving assignments. Method: In the present study 156 students of year three neuroscience block were divided into seven male and seven female groups comprising of 11-12 students in each group. The TBL was introduced during the six weeks of this block and a total of eight TBL sessions were conducted during this duration. We evaluated the effect of TBL on student learning and correlated it with the studentâ??s performance in summative assessment. Moreover the studentâ??s perception regarding the process of TBL was assessed by online survey. Results: We found that students performed better while working in teams as compared to individual testing. The male students performed better in the TBL and had a more favourable impact on their grades in the summative examination. The students who attended the TBL sessions performed better in the summative examinations as compared to those who did not. There were favourable student responses regarding the content covered in TBL as well as the process of TBL which led to improvement in communication and interpersonal skills. Conclusions: We conclude that implementing TBL strategy increased studentâ??s responsibility for their own learning and helped the students in bridging the gap in their cognitive knowledge which was demonstrated by their improved performance in the summative assessment.

Biography

Khurshid Anwar is currently an Associate Professor in Pathology department at Alfaisal University, Riyadh. He teaches General and Systemic Pathology courses to undergraduate medical students. He has teaching experience of more than 32 years in various medical institutes in Pakistan, Malaysia, Japan, UAE and Saudi Arabia. He did his MBBS and MPhil (Pathology) from Khyber Medical College Peshawar and University of Karachi Pakistan respectively. He completed his PhD from Fukui University Japan in 1993. His main research interest is in Human carcinogenesis related to Human Papillomavirus infection and genetic mutations. Recently he has developed keen interest in medical education and is actively using Team Based Learning (TBL) techniques in teaching Pathology courses for last 3 years. He has attended number of international conferences and has more than 16 publications in international journals related to cancer and medical education.