Teaching statistics to medical undergraduates using interactive and participatory sessions

Introduction: In India, medical undergraduates think that statistics is difficult to understand. Often, it is taught just before final assessment examination using didactic lectures, with little use of medical examples and less focus on application. Hence, we prepared interactive, participatory sessions for teaching biostatistics to medical undergraduate. Methods: The sessions were delivered by a facilitator. It had clearly specified objectives and teaching learning strategies. A needs assessment was done by interviewing the students who had undergone traditional biostatistics teaching methodology. Specific learning objectives for the sessions were finalized using the Delphi technique and review of University syllabus. Two trained Community Medicine faculties designed the lesson plans ‘backwards’ from desired outcome to content, teaching/learning strategies, assessment and evaluation process (Outcomes-based lesson planning). Forty, third-semester (Para-clinical phase of the second year) medical undergraduates undertook these seven teaching sessions. The session followed adult learning principles and included group discussions, games and reflections. We evaluated the impact of the sessions using in-depth interviews, retrospective post-then-preself- assessment and a pre-announced written test. Results: With traditional statistics teaching methodology, students perceived it as a standalone subject and were not interested in statistics. Students who underwent the sessions commented that the sessions were enjoyable, interesting, and participatory and more than %90 of them felt they were engaged throughout the session. They also narrated various instances where they could apply the biostatistics learning. In the post-then-pre-assessment median post-session scores for all the objectives were significantly higher (p < 0.050). Conclusion: Use of interactive, participatory sessions for teaching biostatistics to medical undergraduates resulted in a positive reaction and better learning. They also applied these concepts while reading textbooks, listening to lectures and during clinical postings.