Objective To study the impact of introducing a pretest during interactive lecture sessions on learning outcomes among medical students.Design An educational intervention study.Setting Government Medical College of North India.Participants MBBS phase 2 students and faculty members of the Government Medical College.Intervention MBBS phase 2 students were divided into Groups 1 and 2, and Group 1 (70 students) was exposed to a pretest, while the other Group was exposed to a learning objective. Then, after the teaching session, a posttest was administered to Group 1 to assess the score improvement compared with Group 2, which had not received a pretest. Similarly, the next day, the groups were reversed, and Group 2 students (60 students) were exposed to the pretest intervention. About 37 faculty members were also exposed to the pretest intervention in the MEU lecture. Data was collected and analysed to explore the improvement in scores, and feedback regarding the impact of the pretest on the learning experience was obtained.Main outcome measures Impact of introducing pretest on learning outcomes measured through posttest among medical students.Results The introduction of a pretest resulted in a statistically significant gain in posttest scores for participants compared with students not exposed to the pretest. Feedback assessment of students and faculty members highlighted the effectiveness of a pretest on learning outcomes.Conclusion Pretest has a significant impact on improvement in students’ learning outcomes.
Yadav et al. (Thu,) studied this question.