COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THE MOTIVATION OF MEDICAL STUDENTS IN HUMAN BIOLOGY AT SOFIA UNIVERSITY, MEDICAL FACULTY

The course in Human Biology for students in medicine plays crucial role in creating accurate biological and medicobiological approach to the problems of medical science and acquiring biological knowledge about the nature of living processes and their pathological changes in the human body. The desire to learn and the endeavour for self accomplishment, with the aim of developing new knowledge and skills, are stimulated by students' motivation for learning. A comparative study of the level of acquiring knowledge and motivation in the course in Human Biology in students with different preliminary high-school knowledge of biology and students in the Department for Language Teaching and International Students (DLTIS) have been undertaken. The results of this pedagogical study are premised on qualitative and quantitative analysis of the level of performance and the change in the level of motivation of students prior to and after the completion of the course, as an indicator about the quality of their knowledge. Based on the results of the questionnaire carried out with students and its statistical analysis, it could be concluded that the dynamics of the motivation for studying, and thus the capacity to acquire knowledge in the course of studies, are relatively stable in the case of Bulgarian students, but diverse in foreign students. Despite their efforts and their strong desire to cope successfully with the terminology and the complex biological matter, some foreign students do not manage to grasp in time the course material which leads to decrease in their motivation and ability to acquire knowledge. The results of the analysis of the motivation of students in Human Biology are discussed in view of their possible use as an indicator for improving the learning process and an argument for the necessity of maximising the efficiency of the relationship between students and lecturers.