Background: Competency-based medical education (CBME) curriculum in India has introduced many new concepts like a foundation course, early clinical exposure, and self-directed learning (SDL). Sometimes SDL simply means self-study. Self-directed learning as defined by Knowles is a process in which individuals take the initiative with or without the help of others in diagnosing their learning needs, setting their own learning goals, identifying appropriate learning resources, and selecting appropriate learning strategies. SDL is seen as a prerequisite for life-long learners, especially medical graduates. We found poor uptake of SDL sessions in terms of learning and attendance by students. To develop and assess the effect of the SDL module in Community Medicine for Phase -3 MBBS students. Materials and Methods: The study design was a program development and evaluation design. The program development consists of free listing and Nominal Group Technique (NGT). The evaluation design consists of a formative assessment, an end-of-module assessment, and feedback from undergraduate students, postgraduates, and faculties. Data collection procedure: SDL module was developed, agreed and implemented among undergraduates of Phase – 3 MBBS students. Results: Free listing was conducted among undergraduate students who had completed the phase 3 MBBS examination and Nominal Group Technique was conducted among the faculties (n = 7) and Postgraduates of the Department of Community Medicine (n = 2) to explore the appropriate topics for SDL in Community Medicine. The topic with the highest ranking and which was finalized for preparation of the SDL module was “National Health Programme”. Three fourth 118 (75%) of the students scored ≥50% at the end of the module assessment. Manual content analysis for the feedback was categorized into three themes such as facilitating factors, challenges, and solutions. Conclusions: Effective implementation and assessment of SDL sessions are one of the new concepts in the CBME curriculum.
Introduction: Assessment is a critical step in learning process. Postgraduate theory examination ideally should assess higher levels of cognition. In order to maintain high standard of public health the postgraduates of the specialty should be certified properly using the appropriate assessment methods. Since the assessment drives learning, ideally it should be aimed at judging a learner’s attainment of curriculum outcomes. Aim: To evaluate the postgraduate theory exam question papers from 2014 to 2018 in Community Medicine (CM) of various South Indian Universities and to measure the actual content coverage as stated in National Medical Commission (NMC) curriculum and cognitive domain coverage as per Bloom’s taxonomy. Materials and Methods: The present retrospective analytical study was conducted from April 2019 to July 2019 to asses the question papers from 2014-2018 in community medicine. Sixty theory exam question papers (20 per University) of last 5 years of three South Indian Universities namely Pondicherry (PU), Tamil Nadu (TN), and Kerala (KR) of CM subject were analysed for content coverage and to categorise the level of knowledge assessed as per Bloom’s taxonomy. The significance of difference between the data of various years was tested using Chi-square test. Results: Questions testing higher cognitive domain was found only in 15%, 3.75% and 2.5% of PU, TN and KR universities, respectively. Epidemiology of communicable and noncommunicable diseases was the content that received maximum coverage of total marks, 25%, 21.25% and 18.5% in PU, TN and KR universities respectively. Certain topics were not covered in many papers. There was no statistical difference in distribution of marks among various Universities in South India. Conclusion: Findings of this study may be used to redefine the distribution of contents and cognitive domain tested across universities ensuring the validity and reliability of the assessment.
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