Towards Individualized Physiology Lecturing in Africa

Abstract

Physiology lecturers meet students with variable knowledge. The teachers follow their own habituation and experience to fulfill accepted teaching program goals. Internet allows free of charge survey tools for a formative assessment. With hand-held response devices (clickers) it is possible to start every lecture with sets of multiple choice questions to allow an orientation to students’ cognitive skills before a lecture entity. The responses can be collected with handheld clickers or smart phones in a flexible and fast way using instant and complex calculations which enable even in depth analysis to tailor the lecture for that specific student group. A continuous feedback data collection and analysis including monitoring of learned issues through different courses enables quality assessment of teaching and learning processes. Our Department of Physiology began the development of Interactive Presenter TM software to provide a text format and validated test question bank for all teachers and to allow building of level thresholds in physiology teaching in 1995. The idea was also to provide a library of physiology slides, animations, diagrams and problem illustrations and real life case films in digital form. Digital storage brings them easily available and modifiable to all teachers with the software that works as integration platform for all digital material and feedback data. Open import from validated text format question series and seamless use of any computer program or internet source simultaneously broadens flexibility. An open connection to all free of charge internet sources was also integrated. In student groups there are usually participants who have experience due their former studies and work service to suggest problem cases. Thus a dialog with a large group using ad hoc posed questions serves to discuss opinions and prelearned beliefs, understanding and interpretations. If the digital technology is used as an aid and not as a replacement, new forms of modern constructive lecturing are made possible. Several experiments on new ways to have lecture sessions confirm the positive impact on learning and enhanced participation of the students in the university lecturing of the 21st century. The case banks can naturally be collected and shared in digital format. Using technology in a right way to enable student understanding serves the needs of participating students like the university needs in monitoring and guidance of achieved cognitive levels.

Keywords: evaluation of teaching and learning, multiple choice questions, online answering, teacher and student feedback, automatic statistics calculation