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Small group tutorials in physiology - Undergraduate students′ perspectives in a Northeast Indian Medical Institute

Background: Students consider physiology as a dry, difficult, and vast discipline to be mastered in too short period. Small group tutorials (SGTs) per se are "extra efforts" in the curriculum, conducted every week for assessing the effectiveness of lectures on knowledge delivery, and in part, a formative assessment for the student. At present, tutorials consume a considerable 60 h in an academic term which may be utilized otherwise for the students, if not beneficial. Aims: To highlight the perspective of undergraduate students with special regards to SGTs and to identify modifiable/amendable areas, if any in the current form of SGTs, which may likely improve teaching-learning process of physiology in a North Eastern Medical Institute, Imphal. Materials and Methods: Anonymous feedback questionnaires from 95 students in 1 st year MBBS were obtained after exposure to existing tutorials in physiology and analyzed accordingly. Results and Conclusions: Students perceive the present form of the tutorial as one that benefits them in many positive ways in improving their understanding and knowledge of physiology. However, insufficient interaction time as well as tutor′s attitude during tutorials attracted negative responses. They expressed strongly against the tendency of the teachers to re-enforce the importance of memorization as the ultimate way to learn and 95% of them wanted more tutorials as they found that it drives them toward more study covering more topics which increase their self-confidence and can assess their own level of knowledge so that they can improvise accordingly in time.