The Effect of Think-Pair-Share Method of Learning For 1St Year Physiotherapy Students.

Background: The traditional method of teaching and role of student compromises of passive note taking and regurgitation of factual information. The recent trends of active learning engage the students in some activity that forces them to reflect upon the ideas and thus use these ideas actively. This allows the students to be mentally and physically active by gathering information, thinking & problem solving. However, Think-Pair-Share Strategy help the learners by giving them time to think, then involving another colleague to look at the problem with different point of view. As a result they may be more willing and less apprehensive in sharing the ideas with a larger group. This study focuses on including Think-Pair-Share method of learning to allow active involvement of students thus helping them in deep understanding of the knowledge. Material and Methodology: In this experimental study, 100 students of first year physiotherapy were chosen using convenient sampling method with random allocation. The students were taught the viva subjects using Think-Pair-Share method each week. Data was obtained on the basis of viva marks of formative examination. Pre and post assessment viva score was compared for results.Result: The ‘THINK-PAIR-SHARE’ method proved to be effective when was implemented in the academic schedule of first year physiotherapy students. It helped the students to improve their learning capacities, thinking skills and sharing abilities. An improvement of 11.6% and 6.1% was found in the preliminary examination scores of exercise therapy and electrotherapy viva subjects respectively. The ‘THINK-PAIR-SHARE’ strategy was mainly the result of improvement in their examination score. Conclusion: The ‘THINK-PAIR-SHARE’strategy is found to be highly effective in improvement in the examination marks, thinking skills, sharing abilities is concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]