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Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Where are you during lectures?


When attending formal university class I used to sit in the back. To be sure to get out quickly when it was useless or boring. Actually I always sat in the back of a class. Is there a relationship between where students sit in lectures and their performance in examinations? This question is now answered in Medical Education.

The authors realized that students tend to sit in the same place every lecture.They believed that student's attitudes and academic drive may be reflected in their choice of seating position. They carried out an ecological study to find out if there is a relationship between seating position and examination performance.

Those who take the back row are as likely as those at the front to achieve good grades. Medical students sitting in the back is not of educational significance.

The authors distributed a questionnaire to all Year 2 medical students. The students were asked for their identification number to access their mean examination score from the last academic year. The students also had to indicate their seats in the lecture theater with their reason for choice of seat. 92% (n=264) completed the questionnaire.

By the way, when you are cramming for finals here are some good tips to remember

Med Educ. 2007 Dec;41(12):1234.
Is there a relationship between where students sit in lectures and their
performance in examinations?
Roked F, Aveyard P.

Birmingham, UK.

PMID: 18045374 [PubMed - in process]
Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research



2 comments:

RioIriri said...

My seat usually depended on whether or not I had glasses on, how loud (or smelly) the instructor was, and where the best view of the board was.

I had a good pair of glasses in college, having had the money for them, so I sat further back--this allowed me a better participation in general than being up front.

I was a neurotic A+ student all throughout, though, so I'm a bad example :) I just wanted to share that I had a bunch of reasons for choosing my seat in different classrooms.

Dr. Shock said...

Pretty good reasons, not very neurotic;)
Regards Dr Shock