FREQUENT DISCUSSION 
EMBEDDED INTERACTIVE 
LECTURE IN LEARNING 
DERMATOLOGY 

Author of this article has no conflict of 
interest 

•The lecturing method is the most common method of 
instruction in transmitting knowledge to a large number of 
students. 
•Critical analysis shows that this approach has serious 
limitations in teaching students who want to be critical 
thinkers and knowledge generators.1 

Conventional lectures in large classrooms have 
fundamental didactic problems due to a lack of 
interactivity and feedback opportunities. 2 

. In a traditional lecture, a teacher stands at the front of 
the learners 
. and deliver his lecture contents at a speed that he can 
finish them in time. 

. In this lecturing system students hurriedly copy them in 
their note books from a blackboard or overhead 
projector. 
. Students concentrate so much on taking notes, not on 
understanding the concept. 

So, only a small percentage of the lecture content is 
retained in students’ memory after the session.3 

. On the other hand, in an interactive lecture, students 
interact with the instructor and with other students. 
. When a new concept is introduced, students get 
opportunity to concentrate immediately to understand 
the topic and they share their problems with fellow 
students to solve them.3 

. In class room, students should not be passive and 
dependent on the lecturer but they should be engaged 
in the learning process. 
. The lecture has to be transformed to be more interactive 
and ensure the facilitation of deep learning. 1 

. In lectures, there is need to ensure that lecturers have 
dialogue with students and assist them to construct their 
own knowledge. 
. Students are not blank slates, they want to build on 
what they already know.1 

. Research has shown that all teaching methods have 
their strengths and weaknesses. 
. The lecture method despite its well documented 
limitations should not be totally discarded in favour of 
other teaching methods 

. Recent studies supported that ‘Frequent discussion 
embedded interactive lecture’ (FDEIL) has been 
preferred as a good method of learning in medical 
science. 
. However, the effectiveness of FDEIL has not yet been 
tested in dermatology learning. 

To compare the effectiveness of FDEIL 
with lecture followed by discussion 
(LFD) in learning dermatology. 

This comparative study was conducted in 
Abdul Malek Ukil Medical College, Noakhali, 
Bangladesh 

. Permission of the authority and verbal consent of the 
students were taken. 

. Total 56 clinical MBBS students were selected in 
the study. 
. Among them 28 students who were exposed to 
FDEIL were assigned in case group 
. 28 students who were exposed to LFD were 
assigned in control group. 

. The topic of lecture was ‘Psoriasis’, 
. same for both the groups 
. and taken by the same teacher. 

. In FDEIL, teacher delivered lecture for 15 minutes and 
gave a 5 minute’s break for discussion. 
. Thus a one-hour lecture session was divided into 3 
lecture-discussion cycles. 

. In LFD, information was delivered by the teacher for 45 
minutes 
. and last 15 minutes of the session were scheduled for 
discussion among students. 

. During the discussion period the students were allowed 
to discuss about the topic with his fellow students sitting 
nearby which is called ‘pair and share’. 
. Students were also given freedom to ask questions to 
the teacher. 

. At the end of the sessions both groups were given a 
question paper containing 10 objective questions each 
bearing 4 marks. 
. The answer scripts were checked by the same teacher 

. The mean marks of the two groups were compared by 
Student’s ‘t’ test. 
. The marks obtained by the student were stratified in two 
grades: 
. grade I who obtained =60% marks and grade II who 
obtained <60% marks. The difference was calculated 
by chi-square test. 

. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS version 16 
for windows) was used for data analysis. 
. P value <0.05 was considered to be significant. 

. The case group obtained significantly more 
mean±SD marks than control group (34.00±3.82 
vs 27.88±6.37, 95% CI, 3.345-8.975, p<0.001). 

34 
27,8 
8 
0
5 
10 
15 
20 
25 
30 
35 
40 
FDEIL LFD 
Figure-1: Mean plot of marks obtained by two groups 

. Significantly more students of case group obtained 
=60% marks than control group (96.4% vs 71.4%, 
p=0.011). 

0,00% 
10,00% 
20,00% 
30,00% 
40,00% 
50,00% 
60,00% 
70,00% 
80,00% 
90,00% 
100,00% 
FDEIL LFD 
96,40% 71,40% 
Figure-2: Bar diagram showing the percentage 
student of two groups who obtained =60% marks 

FDEIL is more effective lecturing system than LFD 
lecturing system in learning dermatology 

1. Maphosa C and Ndebele C. Interrogating the Skill of 
Introducing a Lecture: Towards an Interactive Lecture 
Method of Instruction. Anthropologist, 2014;17(2): 543- 
550. 

2. Kopf S, Scheele N, Effelsberg W. The Interactive 
Lecture: Teaching and Learning Technologies for Large 
Classrooms. Technical Report TR-05-001, Mathematics 
and Computer Science Department, University of 
Mannheim, January 2005 

3. Rodger SH. An Interactive Lecture Approach to 
Teaching Computer Science.Computer Science 
Department, Duke University, Durham, NC, 27708- 
0129. 

. I am thankful to Beximco Pharma, Navana Pharma, 
Ziska and Unimed Unihealth of Bangladesh 
. for providing travel grant to attend the 23rd WCD. 

FDEIL is more effective lecturing system than 
LFD lecturing system in learning dermatology