Active Learning by Play Dough Modeling in the Medical Profession

Active learning produces meaningful learning, improves attitudes toward learning, and increases knowledge and retention, but is still not fully institutionalized in the undergraduate sciences. A few studies have compared the effectiveness of PowerPoint presentations, student seminars, quizzes, and use of CD-ROMs with blackboard teaching and didactic lectures. In all these studies, it was found that active learning methods made a better impact than passive learning, but the active involvement of all the students was equally lacking. In the literature, the authors encountered only one study that incorporated the making of clay models by the students themselves, to learn better. Play dough is an easy to use learning tool that can help students turn both concrete and imaginary things into colorful models. The main aim of the present study was to highlight the use of play dough in modeling the nervous tracts and also to compare the outcomes of such active learning by modeling over passive learning in medical students who were undergraduates in the first phase of the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery program in India. (Contains 2 tables.)