Abstract

ASSESMENT OF TEACHING METHODOLOGY AND EVALUATION METHODS IN PHARMACOLOGY IN A PRIVATE MEDICAL COLLEGE

Jaipur, Rajasthan, India.

Abstract

With the turn of the century, modern pharmacology has emerged as an increasingly distinct discipline with a recognized career training pathway. Teaching and learning are active processes occurring simultaneously on a continuous basis1. Interactive teaching involves interchange of ideas between teachers, students and the lecture content. It refers to increased discussion among the participants and their active involvement. As pharmacology teachers in medical colleges our aim should be to produce "rational prescribers rather than churn out confused practitioners in the therapeutic jungle". The old concept of teaching "know all" has to change to "know how and why" with emphasis on active learning. In recent years undergraduate training in pharmacology has been revolutionized with adoptions of new methods of teaching that focus on supportive learning through novel teaching approaches like small group discussions, role plays, computer assisted learning,using audio-visual aids, clinical and community pharmacology studies . It has to be acknowledged that attention should be given to the teaching of thinking skills, such as reasoning, creative thinking, and problem solving; as thinking is essential to knowledge and knowledge is essential to thinking2. A number of initiatives have been carried out to improve the teaching of Pharmacology and Therapeutics. In China the present day pharmacology course consists of a combination of lectures, problem-based learning sessions, cliniccorrelated lectures, and small group discussions3. In Malaysia, the teaching-learning of pharmacology has gradually moved from factual regurgitation to more clinical reasoning, from lab-based to more patientoriented approach4. Few studies are conducted in Indian setting related to feedback of teaching methodologies and evaluation methods from 2nd yr medical students5so we have designed this study to get feedback regarding teaching methods and evaluation methods from 2nd year medical students in NIMS medical college, Jaipur Rajasthan. The course assessment instruments like feedback may help to know about the pros and cons of teaching and assessment methods. Currently, student’s feedback represents the primary means used by most programs to assess their methodology6. Though a lot of verbal and non-verbal feedback is conveyed to the faculty in pharmacology, most of it is not published. This inspired us to undertake this study to evaluate the teaching and assessment in pharmacology for undergraduate medical students.

Keywords: pharmacology