COMPARISON OF TWO FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT METHODS IN DISSECTED SOFT PARTS IN ANATOMY

Jyoti Narkhede, Suchitkumar Kamkhedkar*, Rupali Gajare, Sundaram Kartikeyan, Aniruddha Malgaonkar and Sandhya Khadse

ABSTRACT

Dissection of a human cadaver and identification of dissected soft parts is a long-established and time-tested method for teaching anatomy and is a “must know” topic in the subject of Anatomy in the curriculum for the first-year MBBS course. This complete enumeration, cross-sectional comparative study was conducted on 59 first-year MBBS students (30 females; 50.84% and 29 males; 49.16%) at Rajiv Gandhi Medical College in Kalwa, Thane, Maharashtra state, India, to compare the scores obtained by students in traditional practical examination on dissected anatomical soft parts with that obtained in objective structured practical examination. The traditional practical examination was conducted as per the pattern recommended by the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences and were allotted marks out of 20. During the objective structured practical examination, the examiners were provided with a pre-validated checklist and marks (out of 20) were allotted by the examiners. The students obtained higher scores in traditional practical examination and differences between scores in two examination methods were highly significant, both for female (p<0.0001) and male (p<0.0001) students. The gender differences in scores in the traditional practical examination (p=0.980) and objective structured practical examination (p=0.410) were not significant.

Keywords: Anatomy, Dissection, Objective structured practical examination, Soft parts.