Faculty and Students’ Perceptions on Experiential Learning Based Anatomy Dissection Hall Sessions for Medical Undergraduates

Abstract

Introduction: Experiencing is essential to learning anything in life. Medical educators across the world aim at achieving profound learning experiences for their students. Several applications of experiential learning into health professions education have been witnessed over the past two decades. Though many researchers have tried to implement authentic learning experiences in medical education, only a handful have been able to demonstrate its effectiveness in anatomical sciences education. In this study, the authors asked the question - Can experiential learning-based dissection hall sessions be innovated to improve the contextual learning of anatomical sciences during early clinical exposure? Methods: Three experiential learning theory (ELT)-based sessions were conducted. Perceptions from faculty and students were collected. Results: The satisfaction index of the students' perception of the ELT based sessions was of 96.1% and for faculty was 100%. The emergent facilitating factors in the learning process were found to be: more profound and interactive contextual learning experience; improved problem-solving approaches based on dominant skill activities of dissection hall; and learning experiences created to cater to different learning needs of students. The optimal facilitator to student ratio range suggested for these sessions was 1:10 to 1:15. Discussion: The faculties were motivated to utilize this learning experience to further research teaching innovations at the present institution. Experiential learning-based sessions applied to anatomical sciences education can effectively foster positive student engagement and profound learning experience.