[Trial to stimulate learning motivation of medical students in the dissection practice "teaching assistant system"]

At the Medical School of Chiba University, educational dissection tours have been conducted for intra- and extramural students in other programs, such as students of nursing. In the 2006 school year there were more than 1,500 students. As presented in a previous report, we tested an educational program in which our medical students teach other students parts of splanchnology, neurology, and myology to promote student understanding of human physiology through their own teaching. Since this system, termed the "teaching assistant system," was fairly laborious for many medical students, we attempted to improve it by decreasing the students' load and reducing the frequency of teaching from several times to once during the one-term dissection practice. We assessed the improved method with questionnaires for medical students who had studied at the school in 2006 and 2007 (n = 206) before and after teaching other students. The response rate for the questionnaires was 91.3% (n = 188). The results were as follows. (1) Most medical students (69.7%) realized that the task of teaching had stimulating effects on their own learning motivation. (2) According to most of their evaluations (80.4%), the duties of teaching involved in the previous assistant system were laborious. In contrast, the ratio of medical students who considered teaching to be laborious decreased by about half (55.3%) in the present improved system. (3) Most students (79.8%) were satisfied with the teaching assistant system. We concluded that the improved teaching assistant system was effective for the dissection practice.