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This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Concept maps are evidence based pedagogical tools to fathom how meaningfully students have accomplished their learning objectives. They also give intuitive insights to improvise instruction to enable better and deeper understanding the foundations of learning. In this paper we provide an overview of concept maps and share our experiences of using concept maps for the 4 t's of education - teaching, training, testing and thinking., (Copyright: © 2020 Eachempati P et al.)

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, universities world over are aggressively moving their learning, teaching and assessment to online platforms. Educators suddenly feel unsettled, unprepared and unsupported. This inevitable segue from a traditional to online environment will need faculty to grapple quickly and efficiently with the technological imperatives. The purpose of this article is to present ten maxims to navigate the academic challenges posed by out of class learning. The article includes a user-friendly checklist to facilitate the blooming of online teachers., (Copyright: © 2020 Eachempati P and Ramnarayan K.)

In an era that is seemingly saturated with standardized tests of all hues and stripes, it is easy to forget that assessments not only measure the performance of students, but also consolidate and enhance their learning. Assessment for learning is best elucidated as a process by which the assessment information can be used by teachers to modify their teaching strategies while students adjust and alter their learning approaches. Effectively implemented, formative assessments can convert classroom culture to one that resonates with the triumph of learning. In this paper, we present 10 maxims that show ways that formative assessments can be better understood, appreciated, and implemented.

Background: It has been proved that basic science knowledge learned in the context of a clinical case is actually better comprehended and more easily applied by medical students than basic science knowledge learned in isolation. The present study intended to validate the effectiveness of Clinically Oriented Physiology Teaching (COPT) in undergraduate medical curriculum at Melaka Manipal Medical College (Manipal Campus), Manipal, India., Methods: COPT was a teaching strategy wherein, students were taught physiology using cases and critical thinking questions. Three batches of undergraduate medical students (n = 434) served as the experimental groups to whom COPT was incorporated in the third block (teaching unit) of Physiology curriculum and one batch (n = 149) served as the control group to whom COPT was not incorporated. The experimental group of students were trained to answer clinically oriented questions whereas the control group of students were not trained. Both the group of students undertook a block exam which consisted of clinically oriented questions and recall questions, at the end of each block., Results: Comparison of pre-COPT and post-COPT essay exam scores of experimental group of students revealed that the post-COPT scores were significantly higher compared to the pre-COPT scores. Comparison of post-COPT essay exam scores of the experimental group and control group of students revealed that the experimental group of students performed better compared to the control group. Feedback from the students indicated that they preferred COPT to didactic lectures., Conclusion: The study supports the fact that assessment and teaching patterns should fall in line with each other as proved by the better performance of the experimental group of students compared to the control group. COPT was also found to be a useful adjunct to didactic lectures in teaching physiology.

Inventories monitoring students' learning approaches are widely used in medical education research. It is important that teaching interventions adopted in medical schools aim to develop a deep approach to learning in medical students. To study the changes in medical students' approaches to learning before and after the incorporation of clinically orientated physiology teaching (COPT) in the undergraduate physiology curriculum, using the Short Inventory of Approaches to Learning (SIAL). Medical students (n = 223) at Melaka Manipal Medical College (Manipal Campus) undertake a 9-week learning block of endocrine, reproductive and renal physiology in Year 1. During this period, COPT was incorporated along with regular didactic lectures with the intention of enhancing the use of the deep approach and decreasing the use of the surface and strategic approaches to learning taken by the students. The SIAL, which focuses on the learning approaches of students to physiology, was distributed both before and after COPT. The implementation of COPT seemed to affect the learning approaches of students as measured by the SIAL. After the introduction of COPT, there was a significant increase in the use of the deep learning approach, while the majority of subscales for the surface approach showed decreased use. Nevertheless, use of the strategic approach was found to have increased after COPT. The SIAL was found to be a fairly reliable tool with which to determine the learning approaches of medical students. Clinically orientated physiology teaching was successful in enhancing use of the deep approach to learning and reducing use of the surface approach among undergraduate medical students.