Abstract:

Since its initiation, the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Castilla–La Mancha established an inductive and interactive teaching according to the European Space for Higher Education, based on “lectio comentatio disputatio” methodology, carried out in small groups of students. Specialized knowledge is acquired along five phases, each of them based on several learning process focused in the student as the main player. The task undertaken by the teacher is to clarify concepts, and mainly tutoring the students’ work, deepening their learning process. To achieve this, the teacher provides those questions or exercises needed to build the life sciences understanding; the role of the student is to attend and to take part, previous subject preparation.

Clickers are a tool to screen in real time the presence, involvement and even continuous assessment of every student one by one. Also, the teacher can rethink their performance from student feedback. Thus, all these elements together provide a creative and active learn environment.

From the basic principle that concepts are consolidated in a stronger way if the student feels the need to answer than if the student is given the explanation of something which the student has not felt the need to know, we evaluated the impact of this learning tool on the results obtained in the evaluation of Radiology and Physic Therapeutic subject coursed in the third year of Medical Degree at the Faculty of Medicine in Albacete.

We compared the results in 4 groups of 24, 24, 28 and 28 students; two groups were chosen as experimental group and two groups as control group. Examination concept tests and its resolution by clickers together with teacher explanation were carried out during the third phase, only in an unique session, which corresponds to objectives exposition. Control groups were provided only with questions.

After normality was confirmed by a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, we compare mean values of group using clickers (7,1 over 10) an control groups no using clickers (mean graded 6,7 over 10). Statistical analysis of the data (t-test and ANOVA), showed no significantly differences between groups (intra and inter), but with a clear tendency to be higher score in the groups that used the clickers.

With these data, we conclude that the use of clickers does not seem to favor a better grade. An important issue was the positive acceptance of using the clickers to clarify concepts, improve attention and make sessions more enjoyable. This may be because all groups had access to the questions. We will considerate to introduce a new group without access to the questions or use the clickers during at least two or three sessions, during a whole course, for future investigation.

Keywords:

Concept tests, creative and active learning, clickers.