Combination of didactic lectures and review sessions in endocrinology leads to improvement in student performance as measured by assessments

There can be no single best way of learning, and each teaching mode has its own merits and demerits. Didactic lectures in and of themselves are insufficient, whereas a problem-based tutorial alone can be as ineffective. This study was conducted to determine if a problem-based review after didactic lectures would lead to better student performance. To compare performance, the same student group was taught three units of endocrinology (growth hormone, thyroid hormone, and diabetes). Students were divided into the following three groups: diabetes didactic lectures only, growth hormone didactic lectures plus review, and thyroid hormone didactic lectures plus review. All three topics were covered in the didactic lectures, but only growth hormone and thyroid hormone topics were covered in the review session. At the end of the course, all students were given formative assessments in the form of multiple-choice questions. A highly significant increase (P < 0.000) in the percentage of correct responses on the questions covering growth hormone (mean: 0.838, SD: 0.158) and thyroid hormone (mean: 0.686, SD: 0.232) compared with diabetes (mean: 0.478, SD: 0.259) was observed. In conclusion, this study provides further evidence that the combination of didactic lectures and an active review session leads to an improvement in student performance. © 2013 The American Physiological Society