A comparison of teaching by script and slides with audiotape and slides

A comparison was made of the teaching of physics and clinical measurement to postgraduate anaesthetists using a set of twenty audiotape slide programmes and the corresponding scripts of the tape with the slides. Twenty-four anaesthetists participated in a cross-over design trial. Assessment by pre and post-test MCQs showed a significant increase in knowledge from 37.5% to 75.9% in the script and slide group and from 38.3% to 71.7% in the audiotape slide group. An interim programme questionnaire assessing immediate recall of knowledge gave figures of 93.6% and 92.1% for the two groups respectively. The results indicated that the two teaching techniques were equally effective and analysis showed that student ranking was maintained. An opinion questionnaire revealed that the two techniques were equally acceptable to the students. As in previous studies the anaesthetists preferred the audiovisual teaching to formal lectures and the teaching assessments were of special value in indicating parts of the programme content which had been less effectively taught and required upgrading.