Academic Motivation Among First-Year Medical Students at HITEC IMS Following an Integrated Curriculum, A Prospective Study

To evaluate the impact of the curriculum's level 7 integration on first-year students' level of academic
motivation.

This longitudinal study was conducted at HITEC-IMS, Anatomy Department over a period of 12 weeks. Purposive
sampling technique was employed to engage all first year MBBS students, taught an academic module through the integrated
curriculum at level-7. Pre and post module data was collected in two phases, through a pre-validated 28-item Academic
Motivation Scale (AMS) questionnaire with five factor variation at the Likert scale, wherein 4 items represented amotivation,
11 intrinsic motivation, and 13 extrinsic motivations.

A highest mean motivation score was observed for extrinsic motivation in both phases of the study without any
statistically significant difference. While a statistically significant results (p-value <0.05) were observed in the form of a
rise in means scores for three out of four items representing amotivation, and a decline in case of five out of eleven items
showing intrinsic motivation.

The study identified that in our context, the major motivation with which a medical student embarks upon the
journey of medical education, and continues to have later on is extrinsically derived. Moreover, the amotivation enhances
and the intrinsically driven motivation; which lacks behind other factors even at the outset, reduces with exposure to
integrated medical curriculum.