Competency based medical education (CBME) is skill and outcome based teaching methodology where a student learns a set of measurable competencies for early clinical exposure. There is an increasing interest in competency based medical education (CBME) due to the developments and changes in medical education and many medical schools have begun to apply it recently. The present study was conducted to compare the performance of students’ following traditional interactive lecture classes and small group discussions learning sessions. Multiple studies on medical education need to be conducted to make implementation of this new curriculum a success. The present study was conducted in a Basaveshwara Medical College of Chitradurga in the Department of physiology to compare the performance of students’ following traditional interactive lecture classes and small group discussions learning sessions. Ten SGD classes and ten interactive lecture classes was included in this study. The project was conducted in time span of 2months first September 2021 to 30 October 2021. For both lectures and SGD sessions seven days ahead of the commencing of classes the students were provided with all study material (competencies, objectives, power point presentations, learning methods, references to be used) in an email address created for the total batch of students, but only 10 student representatives were included in the group and they shared all information with rest of the class. Horizontal integration with other departments was done as far as possible as per new directives in the medical curriculum of National medical council. There was no difference in performance between interactive lecture classes and SGD sessions in Pre-test sessions (42.07±20.23 vs.44.03±09.05). Students performed better in post-test sessions (50.39 ± 19.41 vs. 63.38 ± 12.79; p value < 0.001) as compared to pre-test sessions in interactive lecture classes. Students also performed better in post-test sessions (55.09±23.5 vs.58.29±22.15; p value < 0.001) as compared to pre-test sessions in SGD sessions. Performances of students were better in SGD sessions as compared to interactive lecture classes in post-test assessment. Small group discussion sessions were more effective than interactive lecture classes for teaching Physiology to undergraduate medical students and for implementation of competency based medical education (CBME). Successful implementation of SGD sessions requires a greater number of teachers as compared to interactive lecture sessions.

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