DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2013.v01i06.0043

Pages: 843-847

We undertook this study to evaluate the retention of gross anatomy lectures conducted in the morning hours versus those conducted in the afternoon hours.Ten lectures of gross anatomy were selected randomly for this study. Five of these were conducted in the morning at 10 am and remaining five in the afternoon at 4 pm. Both sets of the lectures were taken by chalk – board method and included audio, audio-visual and audio-visual-kinesthetic modalities. 24 hour after the lecture, a questionnaire, based on the lecture was given to the students which contained questions testing various aspects of memory viz. A) Obvious facts B) Fine facts--i) <4 items ii) >4 items C) Maneuver D) memory based on understanding E) diagram. Each question was assessed on a ten point scale. Total number of responses received were 1617 (100%). It was observed that the memory for obvious facts > maneuver > memory based on understanding > fine facts (> 4 items) > fine facts (< 4 items). In all aspects tested, retention was better for morning lectures than afternoon lectures. Overall 7% students were totally inattentive in morning lecture in contrast to 20% students during afternoon lecture. Sequence of subtopics taught and time allotted to each subtopic are the other factors affecting learning. Memory for morning lectures can be improved further by 2 - 2.5 times by adding visual aids. Memory for afternoon lectures can be improved further by 8 - 19 times by adding visual aids and kinesthetic aids.