INVESTIGATION ON THE CURRENT SITUATION OF PRACTICAL TEACHING ON HEALTH STATISTICS IN THE UNDERGRADUATES OF SICHUAN UNIVERSITY

[Objective]To evaluate the current situation of practical teaching on Health Statistics in the undergraduates of Sichuan University,and to explore the influencing factors on the effectiveness of practical teaching,and to find the clue to improve the quality of teaching.[Methods]All the undergraduate students who took the course-- Health Statistics in 2010 spring semester were surveyed by the self-designed questionnaire. Cumulative odds logistic regression for ordinal response was used to analyze the risk factors of the effectiveness of practical teaching.[Results]Total 417 students in 6 different majors accepted the survey. The response rate was about 97%. There were only 67.7% students acknowledged the teaching progress was appropriate. Only 54.1% of the students considered the practical courses were closely connected with theoretical course. And only 31.4% of the students said that they could learn a lot after the experimental courses. Unfortunately,the percentage of students dissatisfied with the hardware conditions in our computer labs was about 54.7%. Majors,hardware conditions in the computer labs,the connection degree between the practical and theoretical classes,the teaching level,and the course difficulty were considered to be the influencing factors on the teaching effectiveness.[Conclusion]Hardware conditions in our computer labs need to be improved. And there are several suggestions for teachers to improve the students’ ability in practical application as follows. Teachers can help students form a systematic thinking through the practical teaching with combination of professional features and case study. And teachers should focus on the interpretation of the outcomes and operation of the statistical software simultaneously. Besides,students can be divided into small groups,discussing and communicating with each other makes they can have a better understanding of the knowledge.