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
The enhancement of heat exchanger performance was investigated using dimpled tubes tested at different Reynolds numbers, in the present work four types of dimpled tubes with a specified configuration manufactured, tested and then compared performance with the smooth tube and other passive techniques performance. Two dimpled arrangements along the tube were investigated, these are inline and staggered at constant pitch ratio X/d=4, the test results showed that Nusselts number (heat transfer) of the staggered array is higher than the inline array by 13%. The effect of different depths of the dimple (14.5 mm and 18.5 mm) has been also investigated; a tube with large dimple diameter enhanced the Nusselts number by about 25% for the ran
... Show MoreOrganofluorines, as a pollutant, belongs to a group of substances which are very difficult to neutralize. They are part of many products of everyday use and for this reason they pollute the environment in large quantities. Perfluorinated carboxylic acids are entered into the list of the “Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants” in order to minimize the load on the environment by significantly reducing their use, up to their complete rejection. The DD4 strain was isolated from the soil by the enrichment method and identified using 16S rRNA method as Pseudomonas plecoglossicida. It is able to metabolize perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) as the only carbon source in Raymond nutrient medium with a concentration of 1000
... Show MoreOne of the most important techniques for preparing nanoparticle material is Pulsed Laser Ablation in Liquid technique (PLAL). Carbon nanoparticles were prepared using PLAL, and the carbon target was immersed in Ultrapure water (UPW) then irradiated with Q-switched Nd:YAG laser (1064 nm) and six ns pulse duration. In this process, an Nd:YAG laser beam was focused near the carbon surface. Nanoparticles synthesized using laser irradiation were studied by observing the effects of varying incident laser pulse intensities (250, 500, 750, 1000) mJ on the particle size (20.52, 36.97, 48.72, and 61.53) nm, respectively. In addition, nanoparticles were characterized by means of the Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) test, pH easurement
... Show MoreThe high viscosity of heavy oil is a crucial factor that strongly affects its up-stream recovering, down-stream surface transporting and refining processes. Economical methods for recovering the heavy oil and reducing is very important and related to capital and/or operating cost. This research studies the treatment of Iraqi heavy crude oil, which characterize with high viscosity and low API which makes transportation of heavy crude oil a difficult mission, needs for treatment to reduce viscosity for facilitating transportation and processing. Iraqi heavy crude oil was used Sharqi Baghdad, which obtained from Baghdad east oil fields with API 22.2º.Many kinds of additives were used to reduce the viscosity, experiments were performed o
... Show MoreOil/water emulsions are one of the major threats to environment nowadays, occurs at many stages in the production and treatment of crude oil. The oil recovery process adopted will depend on how the oil is present in the water stream. Oil can be found as free oil, as an unstable oil/water emulsion and also as a highly stable oil/water emulsion. The current study was dedicated to the application of microbubble air flotation process for the removal of such oily emulsions for its characters of cost-effective, simple structure, high efficiency and no secondary pollution. The influence of several key parameters on the process removal efficiency was examined, namely, initial oil concentration, pH value of t
Gypseous soils represented one of the most complex salty soils that faced the geotechnical engineers. Structures that built on gypsum soil will undergo unexpected distortions that will eventually contribute to catastrophic failure. The purpose of this article is to understand the durability of gypsum soil against wetting drying cycles after improvement with polyurethane polymer especially investigate the effect of the wetting-drying cycle on collapsibility. The soil was brought from Sawa lake in AL-Muthanna Governorate in Iraq, with gypsum content 65.5%, A set of Odometer tests were performed to determine the collapsibility potential (CP) for treated and untreated gypsum soil. The result shows that adding a different per
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