A new method of recording attendance improves the academic performance of medical students: Student Response

We appreciate the research conducted by Mondal et al. (1) which explored how a new attendance system, students’ engagement during the collection of attendance (SEdCA), could be utilised to improve examination performance in medical students based in India. They found that participating in SEdCA improved anatomy test scores in 63 out of 93 students. They investigated how SEdCA could be repurposed outside of taking attendance and we commend the authors for this contribution to medical education. We would first like to draw from our experience as senior medical students from London based universities. The issue of attendance is handled via a scanner which scans students’ identification cards. While this is an effective attendance monitoring system, it would not demonstrate the potential academic performance benefit as seen with SEdCA. Although more efficient attendance monitoring is not the centre of discussion here, scanners may be a topic to explore in the future. In light of this issue we recommend a digital quiz. This combats the problem highlighted in the article that teachers invest a large time inspecting roll numbers. One such example of a digital quiz maker is Classmarker (2), however other brands are available. In our experience, digital quizzes were a common practice during histology lectures which reinforced our learning in that subject.