Evaluation of perceptions of student presenters, student audience and faculty towards seminars as teaching learning method in medical education

Student led seminars as a pedagogical method is a type of active learning involving researching, organizing, reflection and presenting it in the most comprehensive way. In recent times with the encouragement of active learning, student led seminars has become a part of medical curriculum. The aim of this study was to explore perceptions of students and faculty towards it. The study was done in 1st year MBBS medical students and faculty members. Three seminars were conducted with 14 students in each seminar as presenters. Perceptions of presenters, student audience and faculty towards seminars were taken with a questionnaire with Likert scale with scoring from 12-60. All respondents agreed that seminars were more interesting, motivating, increase public speaking, remove stage fear and is a good way of learning. Student audience had low perception of seminars being helpful in self-directed learning, worth the effort and helpful in longer retention of knowledge which the student presenters perceived otherwise and the difference was statistically significant. All the respondents had low perception on seminars not being time consuming, does not require more effort and are better than lectures. The respondents have mostly a positive perception of student led seminars with Likert score of 51.9, 48 and 46.4 for seminar presenters, faculty and student audience respectively. The students and the faculty should be educated about the benefits of active learning like seminar presentations and encouraged to conduct and participate in seminar presentations as it facilitates in attainment of, in addition to knowledge, a complete professional development of the future doctor.