Abstract
Background:
Elective courses offer students the opportunity to pursue specialized interests beyond the standard curriculum. India adopted electives formally from MBBS 2019 batch, aligning with Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME). Challenges in organizing, teaching, and assessing electives persist, with disparities in execution and student perceptions. This project aims to assess the Electives program's effectiveness, gathering data on stakeholders' experiences and identifying challenges and recommendations to serve students' educational objectives and enhance their learning experience.
Aim
To Evaluate Institutional Electives in Undergraduate Medical Curriculum.
Objectives:
1. To analyze the students' & faculty perceptions for the elective program.
2. To identify the challenges faced by the students & faculty during electives.
3. To formulate recommendations based on the insights gathered from focus group discussions (FGDs) and survey responses.
Methodology:
Observational Qualitative Study, which will include volunteers from the MBBS 3rd year part 1, admission batch 2020 students and all the faculty and administrators involved in the Electives Program. Their perception on the effectiveness and overall impact of the Electives program would be collected in the form of questionnaires and Focused group discussions would be conducted to know in detail the challenges, best practices and recommendations from faculty and students to improve the Electives program.
Results:
The study found high satisfaction with the Electives program among both students and faculty. They emphasized that the time duration of direct engagement, teaching methodologies and assessment criteria had a significant impact on their choices and satisfaction. Participants provided suggestions for revising the electives to be more structured, clinical-oriented and the addition of sports/general electives to the pool.
Conclusions:
Gathering the stakeholder perceptions, challenges, and recommendations regarding the Electives program it is clear that Electives have immense potential to make an effective educational impact.