Friday, July 17, 2009

A medicine class in OSU

I've been in OSU for a week by now and have got a great deal of interesting experiences. And perhaps the most impressive one is the medicine class I took yesterday.
It's totally different from what I have in China.There were only four students,which is a much smaller size compared with a 40-people class in our university. And the class took place right in a lab, beside a simulator of human. At first, the professor explained the effects of some drugs. I was very lucky to have just studied pharmacology during the past term, so I could understand what they were talking. Actually, I recognized the difficult word phentolamine, which made me really delighted. Then the professor set a situation for the students such as the age, gender, and health condition of the patient, and let them practise the whole process of trachea cannula, which means putting a tube in the trachea. While a student was practising, the professor didn't give him instructions. When he made a mistake, he would think by himself or discuss with his classmates. Only when all of them got stucked would the professor give them some reminder.
The professor and students really got along well with each other and they were just like old friends. They discussed problems, made jokes and went to get a coffee during breaks together. To my great disappointment, this sort of thing seldom happens in China. And most of my medicine courses are the teachers telling us what are the important things we have to know about in the textbooks and explained the difficult parts and students busy taking notes in order to get good grades. Usually, half of what we memorize fade away from our minds after the exams. I've been wondering since my freshman year if this will do us any good. Fortunately, the School of Stomatology in Wuhan University began PBLs, which means Problem Based Learning a few years ago. And I'm looking forward to that.
I know it clearly that it's hard to have classes in China like this one I experienced here because there're so many students. So I just hope in the future, things will get better in China.

Sherry

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