Background: Scientific education aims to be inclusive and to improve students learning achievements, through appropriate teaching and learning. Problem Based Learning (PBL) system, a student centered method, started in the second half of the previous century and is expanding progressively, organizes learning around problems and students learn about a subject through the experience of solving these problems.Objectives:To assess the opinions of undergraduate medical students regarding learning outcomes of PBL in small group teaching and to explore their views about the role of tutors and methods of evaluation. Type of the study: A cross-sectional study.Methods: This study was conducted in Kerbala Medical Colleges among second year students. A self-administered questionnaire was prepared to evaluate the newly applied teaching system. The study analysis included simple descriptive analysis and determining association through t-test, chi square test and regression analysis and using structural equation models to determine simultaneous association between different students’ demographic characteristics and potential predictors using SPSS-20 and Amos software at a significance level of < 0.05.Results:A total of 131 undergraduate medical students participated in the study with a response rate of 94%. The majority (93%) have indicated that PBL strategy contributed effectively to their knowledge development with a similar majority (92%) considering PBL successful new teaching method. About 86% reported that would choose PBL rather than conventional method and also 86% would advise PBL for others. Similarly, high majority indicated that various PBL activities are essential. Regarding the tutors’ role in PBL, the majority (92%) indicated that this role was positive and fundamental. According to two thirds (68%) of participants PBL application in Kerbala Medical college was very good application while a higher majority described various PBL sessions as successful and positive and fundamental role of tutors was stressed by most students.Conclusions: This study highlighted the benefits of soliciting student impressions of effective small group teaching. The students’ emphasized group atmosphere and facilitation skills of tutor in learning.Key words: Problem Based Learning, Medical Education, Small Group Teaching, Team Based Learning, Kerbala Medical College
In the present study benzofuran based chalcones 1 (a, b) are synthesized by condensing aromatic aldehydes with 2-acetylbenzofuran in the presence suitable base. These chalcones are very useful precursors for the synthesis of pyrazoline, isoxazoline, pyrmidine, cyclohexenone and indazole derivatives. All these compounds are characterized by their melting points, FTIR and 1 HMNR (for some of them) spectral dat
An experimental study is conducted to investigate the effect of heat flux distribution on the boiling safety factor of its cooling channel. The water is allowed to flow in a horizontal circular pipe whose outlet surface is subjected to different heat flux profiles. Four types of heat flux distribution profiles are used during experiments: (constant distribution profile, type a, triangle distribution profile with its maximum in channel center, type b, triangle distribution profile with its maximum in the channel inlet, type c, and triangle distribution profile with its maximum in the channel outlet, type d). The study is conducted using heat sources of (1000 and 2665W), water flow rates of (5, 7 and 9 lit/min). The water
... Show MoreClassification of imbalanced data is an important issue. Many algorithms have been developed for classification, such as Back Propagation (BP) neural networks, decision tree, Bayesian networks etc., and have been used repeatedly in many fields. These algorithms speak of the problem of imbalanced data, where there are situations that belong to more classes than others. Imbalanced data result in poor performance and bias to a class without other classes. In this paper, we proposed three techniques based on the Over-Sampling (O.S.) technique for processing imbalanced dataset and redistributing it and converting it into balanced dataset. These techniques are (Improved Synthetic Minority Over-Sampling Technique (Improved SMOTE), Border
... Show MoreThis paper demonstrates the spatial response uniformity (SRU) of two types of heterojunctions (CdS, PbS /Si) laser detectors. The spatial response nonuniformity of these heterojunctions is not significant and it is negligible in comparison with p+- n silicon photodiode. Experimental results show that the uniformity of CdS /Si is better than that of PbS /Si heterojunction
This paper proposes feedback linearization control (FBLC) based on function approximation technique (FAT) to regulate the vibrational motion of a smart thin plate considering the effect of axial stretching. The FBLC includes designing a nonlinear control law for the stabilization of the target dynamic system while the closedloop dynamics are linear with ensured stability. The objective of the FAT is to estimate the cubic nonlinear restoring force vector using the linear parameterization of weighting and orthogonal basis function matrices. Orthogonal Chebyshev polynomials are used as strong approximators for adaptive schemes. The proposed control architecture is applied to a thin plate with a large deflection that stimulates the axial loadin
... Show MoreAbstract. Full-waveform airborne laser scanning data has shown its potential to enhance available segmentation and classification approaches through the additional information it can provide. However, this additional information is unable to directly provide a valid physical representation of surface features due to many variables affecting the backscattered energy during travel between the sensor and the target. Effectively, this delivers a mis-match between signals from overlapping flightlines. Therefore direct use of this information is not recommended without the adoption of a comprehensive radiometric calibration strategy that accounts for all these effects. This paper presents a practical and reliable radiometric calibration r
... Show MoreCalculating the Inverse Kinematic (IK) equations is a complex problem due to the nonlinearity of these equations. Choosing the end effector orientation affects the reach of the target location. The Forward Kinematics (FK) of Humanoid Robotic Legs (HRL) is determined by using DenavitHartenberg (DH) method. The HRL has two legs with five Degrees of Freedom (DoF) each. The paper proposes using a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm to optimize the best orientation angle of the end effector of HRL. The selected orientation angle is used to solve the IK equations to reach the target location with minimum error. The performance of the proposed method is measured by six scenarios with different simulated positions of the legs. The proposed
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