title: Do student-defined learning issues increase quality and quantity of individual study?
abstract: An experiment was conducted in the context of a problem-based learning course to investigate the influence of a learning-goal-free problem scenario on the quality and quantity of individual study. In half of the tutorial groups, the problem scenario was constructed in such a way that it provided useful learning issues (goal-specified condition), whereas in the other half of the tutorial groups, the problem scenario did not provide learning issues (goal-free condition). It was demonstrated that students in the goal-free condition read more articles, studied longer, and spent more time reporting the studied literature than their peers in the goal-specified condition. These findings suggest that the use of goal-free problems has a positive effect on the students' individual study and the extensiveness of the tutorial group meeting.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Higher Education Research Center, Erasmus University Rotterdam, PO Box 1738, NL-3000 DR, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. verkoeijen@fsw.eur.nl
authors.forename: Peter P J L
authors.initials: PP
authors.lastname: Verkoeijen
authors.forename: Remy M J P
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Rikers
authors.forename: Wilco W R
authors.initials: WW
authors.lastname: te Winkel
authors.forename: Marianne M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: van den Hurk
mesh_terms: D006040:Goals; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D018794:Problem-Based Learning / Q000379:methods*; D013336:Students, Health Occupations / Q000523:psychology*