Co-teaching: Exploring an Alternative for Integrated Curriculum.

PURPOSE: Currently, the curriculum of medical education is compartmentalized which makes achieving the expected outcome, a real challenge. Co-teaching, an existing concept in education, however, may be used in medical education for integrating the applied component while basic concepts are being taught. The hypothesis, "can co-teaching be an alternate for an integrated curriculum?" was explored in this study. Therefore, the present study was designed to compare the outcomes of co-teaching with the existing teaching methodology owing to the absence of integrated curriculum.

METHODS: Co-teaching and conventional modules of topics Diabetes mellitus (DM) and Alcohol and liver disease (AL), were prepared and validated. 100 under graduate medical students were randomly assigned to groups A and B. Group A was taught DM by Conventional teaching (CT) and AL by Integrated Co-teaching (ICT) and Group B was taught DM by ICT and AL by CT. A knowledge assessment tool of 20 multiple choice items was administered to assess the pre, post and retention knowledge scores. Change between knowledge scores was analyzed using inferential statistics.

RESULTS: Both conventional and co-teaching were significantly effective in increasing the knowledge scores (p = 0.0001) with no significant difference in learning outcomes (p = 0.59) between the two. However, co-teaching showed better knowledge retention compared to conventional teaching (p = 0.008).

CONCLUSIONS: Co-teaching could be considered as a substitute for integrated curriculum as it enabled comparatively better retention of knowledge as revealed by the findings.