Perceptions of medical students in King Abdulaziz University about teaching and learning modalities : comparative cross sectional study between traditional and system-based curriculum

Abstract EN

The undergraduate curriculum of the Medical School-King Abdul-Aziz University, Saudi Arabia was a traditional one (it was teacher-centered, discipline-based, and hospital-based with no options or elective modules).

In 2006-2007, the Medical School adopted a new system-based curriculum.

This study was constructed to compare the perceptions of students of both, the traditional and new curricula to identify the problem areas that should be remediated.

A comparative cross-sectional study was carried out with the third- and fourth-year students at 2008/2009.

A questionnaire was distributed to the third-year students who were enrolled in the new system-based curriculum (n = 227 response rate was 80 %) and to the fourth-year students who were enrolled in the old curriculum (n = 217 response rate was 76 %).

For the third-year students, the total mean scores of all the studied domains were significantly higher compared with the fourth-year students except for the fourth domain (library and electronic learning resources), which showed an insignificant difference between the two groups.

Perceptions of students who experienced the system-based curriculum are significantly higher than those who had experienced the traditional ones ; however, the overall score is still low.

Therefore, there is a great need for improvement.