Students' engagement and perceptions of small group tutorial classes among undergraduate medical students

Small group teaching is an educational strategy that may be used to facilitate learning. Tutorials enable an adult approach toward learning where students take responsibility for their own learning. We aimed to investigate the students' engagement and perceptions of small group tutorial classes among undergraduate medical students.

A cross‑sectional, descriptive survey was conducted at the Subbaiah Institute of Medical Sciences, where we collected the data from 300 undergraduate students using convenience sampling method. A self‑administered questionnaire consisting of 22 items which was piloted on 20 students, and six experienced medical educators were consulted for face validation. The internal consistency of the questionnaire measured by Cronbach's alpha reliability test was 0.80. It was used to measure the students' perception on the effectiveness of tutorials with regard to learning experience, teamwork, confidence, communication skills, and role of the teacher. Statistical analyses included mean and standard deviation for the description of each item, t-test to compare the mean scores for gender and class year, and one‑way analysis of variance between groups for age group comparisons using SPSS version 24 software.

Students' overall perceptions of small group teaching effectiveness showed that tutorials were beneficial to their learning process (mean: 3.61±0.50). The majority of the students have positive perceptions toward small group effectiveness, particularly in learning experience (mean: 3.72±0.68) and teamwork (mean: 3.36±0.59). A significant difference was found between year 1 and year 2 students with regards to learning experience (p<0.001), teamwork (p<0.05), communication skills (p<0.05), and the role of the tutor (p<0.001). Additionally, the mean scores, measuring overall effectiveness of tutorials, for the 2nd year students were significantly higher than that for the 1^st year students (3.70± .41 and 3.50 ±0.57, (p<0.001).

The data of this study show that tutorial is an effective small group teaching method for medical students compared to large group teaching.