The effectiveness of a computer-aided instruction courseware developed using interactive multimedia concepts for teaching Phase III MD students

Abstract

A prospective study on 64 final-year MD students who failed in their pre-test MCQ examination on admission to the Paediatric Cardiology Block was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of an innovative computer-assisted instruction (CAI) courseware developed using interactive multimedia concepts. Students were randomly divided into two groups and were taught by either conventional lecture (Group A) or using the CAI multimedia courseware (Group B). They were required to sit for a post-test MCQ assessment immediately after exposure to the different teaching methods. There was no significant difference in the mean pre-test scores between Group A (37.4 ± 9.1) and Group B (40.3 ± 9.7). The results showed that 81.3% of students in Group B passed the post-test compared with 40.6% in Group A. Both groups showed significant improvement in their mean post-test scores compared with their respective mean pre-test scores. However, students taught using the CAI multimedia courseware did significantly better than students taught using the conventional method. This study suggests that CAI multimedia may be a more effective method for teaching cardiovascular subjects which required dynamic illustrations, such as Tetralogy of Fallot.