Medical Undergraduates' Written Assessment Profile of Illustration-based Neuroanatomy

Neuroanatomy is an integral part of Anatomy and it is one of the most visually dependent and visually-demanding one. Analysis of recent trends of emphasizing the importance of illustrations which are being reflected in the learning pattern or student-assessment can provide an insight into the situation and help teachers and curriculum planners. Thus, the present study was planned i) to analyze the Neuroanatomy portion of the recent undergraduate Anatomy written question papers of four public universities of Bangladesh for understanding how the ability to draw and label has been assessed in the questions and ii) to determine the ability of the undergraduate students to answer illustration-based questions as compared to their ability to answer non-illustration-based (text-based) questions in Neuroanatomy. For Part-A of the study, all the 'segment's of item (SAQ and MCQ) dealing with Neuroanatomy in all the available Anatomy written question papers of all the First Professional MBBS Exams of four public universities of Bangladesh of the last five years (2005 to 2009) were identified. The frequency of 'segment's those were assessing the ability to draw and label was determined. For Part-B of the study, 214 students were taken as participants. They were divided into two equal groups by randomization. The first group was given 100 illustration-based questions based on the illustrations representing different 'purpose's and 'form's in Snell1. The other group was given 100 non-illustration-based questions on the corresponding textual material. The scores of the two corresponding groups were compared using an unpaired 't' test. The frequency of segments was assessing the ability to draw and label was 3.86%. The performance of the undergraduates answering illustration-based questions was significantly poorer (p=0.0) than non-illustration-based questions (mean±SD being 23.36±14.02 and 44.75±9.50 respectively). Teaching and assessment of Neuroanatomy should be planned in a way to orient undergraduates towards more illustration-based understanding and performance. Necessary modifications in the curriculum are recommended.