APPLICATION OF INSERT METHOD IN THE TEACHING PROCESS AT THE KAZAKH NATIONAL MEDICAL UNIVERSITY

Policy makers working in the area of education often discuss necessity of development of critical thinking in students who after the graduation from the university will be entering the job market. However, in the former FSU countries faculty is often facing a problem of lack of interest on behalf of students to the subject and the textbook.

To help students to learn, and to make the learning process more interesting and vigorous, the faculty of the pathology department applied INSERT method to reading of the pathology textbook.

INSERT stands for Interactive Noting System of Effective Reading and Thinking and it is a method of active reading, when the reader stays alert and interested in the topic and the text of the book. To keep this interest alive we recommended our students to use three different colors of stickers and use stickers to demonstrate that they are ‘familiar’ or ‘less familiar’ with certain things in the textbook, or they ‘wish to know more’. We tested this method with 6 groups of 2nd year students studying at the faculty of ‘General Medicine’. All 6 groups were attending ‘General Pathology’ class for 6 weeks and participating in the seminars.
To test the effectiveness of this method we asked students to fill a short survey (50 students), and organized one focus group with 6 students.

The survey included questions related to INSERT method and its application and if the students followed the recommendations of the department and used stickers when reading the textbook. We also were interested if the students shared with their peers when they faced challenges or if they applied this method when preparing for other subjects. During the focus group we tried to understand if the attitudes of students changed to the textbook and the subject, and to what extent this method was useful in comparison with more traditional methods.

Surprisingly students resisted to the introduction of this new method in the teaching process, moreover, we found out that they required development of communication skills when working with their peers in a group or individually, they also required very close tutoring from the teacher.