Is a PBL curriculum a better nutrient medium for student-generated learning issues than a PBL island?
Problem based learning (PBL) is often introduced in curricula in form of short segments. In the literature the value of these PBL-islands is doubted. In order to gain more insight in this curricular approach, we compared student generated learning issues, from a 7-week PBL-island introduced in a traditional curriculum (PBL-I), with the gold standard of a PBL-based model-curriculum (PBL-B) existing in parallel at the same University (Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany). Both tracks use five identical PBL-cases. Thousand seven hundred and three student-generated learning issues of 252 tutorial groups (193 PBL-I and 59 PBL-B groups with six to seven students per group) were analysed in seven different categories. Results showed that overall there were no substantial differences between both curricula. PBL-B students generated more problem-related and less basic science clinical learning issues than PBL-I students, but in both groups learning issues were related to the same number of different subjects. Furthermore, students in the PBL-curriculum tend to generate little less but slightly better phrased issues. Taken together, we found no substantial evidence with respect to student-generated learning issues that could prove that students cannot work with the PBL-method, even if it is introduced later in the curriculum and last only for a short period of time.
Gehlhar
K
K
University of Witten/Herdecke, Alfred-Herrhausen-Strasse 50, 58448, Witten, Germany. Kirsten.Gehlhar@uni-wh.de
Wüller
A
A
Lieverscheidt
H
H
Fischer
M R
MR
Schäfer
T
T
D003479:Curriculum; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D018794:Problem-Based Learning / Q000379:methods*; D015397:Program Evaluation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013334:Students; D013663:Teaching