The Effectiveness of the Pitstop Method of Teaching Among Phase II Medical Students

Background and objectives The pitstop method of teaching involves short educational videos that entail a stepwise approach to augment knowledge retention and understanding. Short videos stimulate both visual and auditory pathways, thereby improving learner's experiences, knowledge retention, and understanding of the concept, which will help with long-term memory. In this study, we aimed to compare the pitstop method of teaching with the didactic lecture technique based on assessment and feedback. Methodology After obtaining the Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) approval, a comparative cross-sectional study was conducted among 210 phase II MBBS students who gave consent to participate in the study. Two sessions comprising a total of 10 videos with five videos in each session were planned for a particular system. Two types of teaching methodology were used in the videos. For session 1, a short video using a presentation template was used. For session 2, a short video using hand notes and figures was prepared and incorporated into the video. Each video was two minutes in duration. Students were divided into A and B batches. For session 1, A batch was the control group and B batch was the test group; for session 2, the test and control groups were reversed. Pre-test and post-test exercises were conducted for each session. Results were analyzed and statistical analysis was performed at the end of the project. Results An analysis of both sessions was done for the A and B batches. For session 1, the test group fared well with a mean of 4.50 compared to the control group with a mean of 3.53. For session 2, the test group performed well with a mean of 4.43 compared to the control group with a mean of 3.87. No significant difference was observed when the test groups of the two sessions were compared (p=0.74). Conclusions Short videos delivered by using the pitstop method will help stimulate memory and enhance the attention of students to better process the information. We believe that the implementation of this method will lead to good outcomes among the students.