The Study of Medical Students' Satisfaction with Active Participation in the Presentation of the Topic of Poisoning

Introduction

Learning is a process in which the knowledge and information of a person are increased or the person is trained to be able to do a practical skill(1).According to the important job of medicine (which is saving people's lives) effective ,active, and permanent learning is of considerable importance for the students of this major with which they can guarantee their scientific and professional success and also the health of the society(2).Failure in reaching the predetermined educational goals can be considered as one of the major problems of educational systems which can be overcome through effective teaching(3).Creating a proper atmosphere for increasing learners' participation in the process of learning is one of the most important criteria of effective teaching specially from the viewpoint of the learners(5-3).

Although the new methods of teaching are invented and planned in recent decades, lecturing is still the most popular teaching methodology in higher education system in Iran .In the method the transfer of the information is one sided and is done only by the teacher, in this method the teacher is the only active speaker in the class and the learner is just the receiver and passive. The major advantages of this method include easy planning ,presentation of large amount of material in a short time, and  presenting for a large population of learners .On the other hand, there are disadvantages such as learners' being passive, boring process of teaching ,and the decrease of the necessity of lecturing according to the development of new educational technologies(6.

Although the role of lecturing cannot be ignored in the process of learning but in recent years a lot of attempts have been done in the case of improving the teaching-learning methodologies which have been in accordance with the improvements of information technology (7).The emphasis of most of these new educational teaching methodologies is using active learning such as participation of learners in the process of learning. Educational researchers believe that using active learning is an effective learning methodology which leads to greater and faster learning, problem-solving skills and critical learning, longer maintain of data, increase of tendency to team-work, and increase of satisfaction of learners (12-8).

In the present study after the teaching of the general topics of poisoning by the instructor, the technical part of the topic which studies poisons one by one separately has been taught through active participation of the learners. The goal of the present study is the determination of the satisfaction medical students' satisfaction with active participation (seminar) in the teaching of the topic of poisoning.

Methods:

This descriptive-analytical study has been conducted during 2012-2013 on all stages of Birjand University of Medical Sciences who had selected the course of Getting Familiar with Poisonings and forensic Medicine (40 participants).In this study the topic of Familiarity with poisonings has been presented through seminar by the students. In the first sessions the general information of the topic of Poisoning were presented by a forensic medicine and poisoning specialist in the class. Then for the technical study of the method of getting poisoned by each poison (such as Amphetamines, Alcohol, and etc.) the educational case was planned which included the presentation of the patient with poisoning symptoms with that  specific poison ,evaluation method, and the actions performed for the patient, how to reach the clinical diagnosis, and treatment points of that material. After the end of the general points of the topic, the goals of the educational cases were presented to volunteer students for giving a seminar.

For each session two students were assigned to give the seminar (there were totally 15 sessions for this part).Volunteer students were told that the educational material they were given was just the general parts and they were responsible for getting the complete information from reliable written or electronic sources. As these activities included a part of the score of class activities of the students, because of research ethics the students who did not tend to give a seminar were assigned other jobs, so that they could get the class activity score as well.

For the determination of the satisfaction of students with the active teaching methodology through seminar, questionnaires of Jafari's study were used which included 10 questions and four fields including better comprehension of poisonings(question 1),internal interest and motivation( questions 3 and 4),learning (questions( 7,8,9, and 10) and the relationship of teacher and student (questions 5 and 6).The

Answers were classified based on Likert's 5 rank  scale from completely agree ( with the score of 5) to completely disagree ( score of 1).Thus the minimum and maximum satisfaction score were 10 and 50.The content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed through a survey of the opinions of faculty members of the Internal Department. The reliability of the tests ,in Jafari's study was confirmed through test retest method (r=0.78).Demographic information such as gender, total average, the score the student expected to get, and giving or not giving a seminar was collected in a separate questionnaire.

After data collection, it was analyzed by SPSS 16.For descriptive statistics, data was analyzed through frequency distribution test. For the study of the correlation of the data Pearson Correlation Test and Independent T-test were used. The significance level was P  0.05.

Results:

40 students participated in this study.24 were female (60%) and 16 were, ale (40%).The mean of average score of participants was 16.20(the minimum was 12, and the maximum was 18 and standard deviation was 1.39).29 students (72.5%) gave a seminar.

The average of satisfaction score of participants with active learning methodology through seminar was 31.47 ± 10.22 (the minimum was 10, and the maximum was 50).The mean of each one of four fields has been shown in table 1.Table 2 shows the frequency of the replies to each item.

 The study of the relationship of the mean of score of each field with the total average of the students showed that in the fields of better comprehension of poisonings, internal interest and motivation, learning and the relationship of the teacher and student the correlation coefficient have been 0.884, 0.860, 0.935, and 0.854 respectively which has been statistically meaningful in all cases. Table 3 shows the complete information in the case of students with the total average of satisfaction score and average score of each field.

The mean of total score of students' satisfaction did not have a meaningful relationship with their gender(p=0.19).In the study of the relationship of the mean score of each field with students' gender ,the results showed that just in the field of internal interest and motivation there was a meaningful difference between the two genders and the mean score of females had been significantly higher than males(6.75 against 5.06,p=0.028 and t=2.30).Table 4 shows the complete information in the case of the relationship of gender and mean score of students' satisfaction and the mean score of each field.

The examination of the relationship of giving a seminar with the mean score of student satisfaction and the mean score of each field none of the results have been meaningful.

Tables

Table no.1: The score of student satisfaction with active teaching methodology in each of the fields under study

Table 2: The frequency of agreement of students with the method of teaching

Table 3: The relationship of the total average of students with the total mean of satisfaction score and mean of the score of each field

With the significance level of p≤0.05 the relationship has been meaningful.

Table 4: The relationship of students' gender with the total mean sore of satisfaction and mean score of each field

Significance level has been p≤0.05 and the relationship has been meaningful.

Discussion

This descriptive analytical study was conducted with the aim of the examination of medical students' satisfaction with active participation (through giving a seminar) in teaching the topic of poisoning. After the teaching of general points of poisonings through lecturing, for the teaching of the topic of poisoning with each substance first a case was prepared based on reliable courses such as patient presentation with the symptoms of poisoning with that special poison, evaluation method and steps taken for the patient ,the method of getting to the clinical diagnosis and treatment points .There were two cases for each session and the provided data for each poison was given to the presenter before the class. After giving all the seminars ,the satisfaction of students was assessed through a questionnaire which was used in Jafari's study .The results of this study showed that the mean score of students' satisfaction with the active learning methodology through seminar was 31.47 (out of 50).In the study of the relationship of the score of each one of the fields of satisfaction with the total average of students the results showed that in the fields of better understanding of poisonings, internal interest and motivation ,learning ,and the relationship of teacher and student the correlation coefficient has been 0.884,0.860,0.935,and 0.854 respectively which have been statistically meaningful.

The results of this study were in accordance to the results of Azadbakht's study and showed that active learning method and presenting the topics by students through Power Point creates motivation ,lively atmosphere ,and enjoying learning(14).Noroozi et al. showed that factors such as teacher not being the only speaker, liveliness of the class ,participation of the students, and searching and asking about the incomprehensible parts, presenting the new topics by the students increased the motivation and interest of nursing and surgery room students in comparison to the traditional method(15,4).In Mehdizadeh et al.'s study ,most of the medical  students in the group of learning anatomy through problem-solving believed that this teaching methodology increased their interest and enthusiasm for learning and studying more about the topic(16). In the study of Najafi et al. it was shown that involving the students in the classroom and preparing the class for group discussion are the factors of effective learning from the viewpoint of medical students and students expected the instructors to create an active question and reply atmosphere in class (17, 4).

In accordance with the results of this study in Jafari's study in the case of the comparison of lecturing and eclectic  methodologies ,according to the viewpoints of students in the case of satisfaction of medical students in biochemistry in the eclectic group showed that students prefer this method to lecturing and believed that eclectic method in the teaching of biochemistry increased motivation, interest, and student comprehension ,it also facilitated the comprehension of biochemical mechanisms and the relationship of biochemistry with the diagnosis and treatment of diseases and increased the sincerity of teacher and student(13).

Conclusion

Totally this study showed that the students were satisfied with teaching through seminar, although the role of lecturing cannot be ignored in the process of teaching specially medical sciences, but the authors of this article would like to suggest that university instructors involve students in the process of teaching and give a part of the task to the students and guide them through. For further studies, the

Comparison of active learning methodologies from the point of the effect of these methodologies on the satisfaction, maintaining of the information, learning, and also studying the role of new educational technologies such as mobile software are recommended.