MOCK VIVA AS A TEACHING-LEARNING TOOL IN COMMUNITY MEDICINE

Pradnya Jadhav* and Sundaram Kartikeyan

ABSTRACT

This before-and-after study (without controls) was conducted on 62 seventh semester MBBS students (30 females: 48.38% and 32 males: 51.62%) at a medical college in Maharashtra state, Western India to determine the student scores before and after using mock viva as a teaching-learning tool. After preparing a blueprint grid containing all the topics, a question bank was created, which comprised pre-tested and pre-validated questions from the “must know”, “nice to know” and “desirable to know” categories. Before and after the mock viva training, a standardized viva voce examination was conducted, which comprised 10 questions (total 10 marks, with an allotted time of 10 minutes per student). To preclude possible bias, inter-trainer and inter-examiner variability, the same set of teachers was involved in conducting viva voce examinations, as well as in mock viva training. The mean scores were significantly higher after mock viva training as compared to that before mock viva training for all students (p<0.0001), female students (p<0.0001) and male students (p<0.0001) and the gender differences in scores were not significant. The time and manpower required to train student-actors, as well as, compile and validate the question bank, are among the challenges in conducting regular mock viva sessions.

Keywords: Mock viva voce, Oral examination, Teaching-learning tool.