# Impact of reflection writing on the learning ability of Indian medical students

## TL;DR

The study found that Indian medical students who did individual reflective writing after lectures performed better than those who worked in groups.

## Contribution

The novelty lies in comparing individual versus group reflective writing effectiveness among medical students in India.

## Key findings

- Individual reflective writing led to higher scores than group writing.
- Post-test scores improved significantly after the intervention.
- Group reflection performance was consistently lower than individual reflection.

## Abstract

Reflective writing develops meta-cognition among students. Therefore, it is of interest to compare effectiveness of post lecture
reflective writing to didactic lecture between individual and group reflective writing. Hence, we included 124 first-year students from
AIIMS Bhopal, India and divided them in two groups of 62 students. Both groups took a pre-test using a reflection questionnaire.
Students were taught reflective writing. Both groups attended physiology lectures on two different topics. First lecture on body fluids
where Group A wrote reflections individually and Group B did so in sub-groups (B1 to B6). After another lecture on Pathophysiology of
oedema, Group A wrote reflections in groups and Group B wrote individually (A1 to A6). Both groups took a test in the form of MCQ about
reflective writing on lectures. After intervention both groups took a post-test using a reflection questionnaire. Mean and standard
deviation of Pre-test is 3.86 ± 0.86 and Post-test is 7.58 ± 1.01, respectively. The Mean and standard deviation of
reflection who wrote individually is 38.05 ± 4.41 and in group is 27.45 ± 3.93, respectively with p-value < 0.05.
Evaluation of students who wrote reflection in groups after second lecture the mean and standard deviation of reflection who wrote
individually is 38.22 ± 4.64 and in group is 27.03 ± 2.87 respectively with p-value < 0.05. The performance of students
who wrote reflection in groups is not satisfactory as compared to students who wrote their reflection individually.