Original Research Article
Year: 2018 | Month: April | Volume: 5 | Issue: 4 | Pages: 6-11
Concept Mapping Enhancing Learning in Health Professionals
Ashima Badyal1, Sanjeev Kumar2, Amarjeet Singh Bhatia3
1Lecturer, Department of Biochemistry, Government Medical College, Jammu
2Physician, Sub-District Hospital Hiranagar, District Kathua
3Professor, Head, Department of Biochemistry, GMC, Jammu
Corresponding Author: Ashima Badyal
ABSTRACT
Concept mapping is an educational tool that encourages meaningful learning. Teaching is challenging in undergraduate medical education, particularly because it is based upon imparting lectures and rewarding for recall of factual information during examinations. The purpose of the study is to introduce concept maps with clinical cases to improve learning of Biochemistry course content.
Participants were first year MBBS students (n=150) from Government Medical College Jammu, admitted during the academic year 2017-2018, attending the Biochemistry Department. They were randomly divided into two groups, the one (group 1) continuing with the traditional program (n=90), the other (group 2) with innovative program using concept mapping (n=60). The 60 students in the innovative group were further randomly divided into groups of six each, for a total of 10 small groups.
In each of the three clinical-case unit tests, thereafter, the group 2 outperformed the group 1. Against the range of 12.54 to 14.48 for the group 2, the group 1 showed the score range of 8.66 to 10.02 only. Nearly all the students gave positive feedback and found the method interesting and worth all effort.
Thus, learning with understanding allows integration of new concepts with previously learned concepts and leads to retention of information in long-term memory in a usable manner and students may become more independent and responsible for their learning. This article introduces the concept of concept-maps in medical education as an effective instrument towards education and preparing a better physician and health professional.
Key words: Concept mapping, medical education, health professionals.
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