title: Is a PBL curriculum a better nutrient medium for student-generated learning issues than a PBL island?
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: University of Witten/Herdecke, Alfred-Herrhausen-Strasse 50, 58448, Witten, Germany. Kirsten.Gehlhar@uni-wh.de
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Gehlhar
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wüller
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lieverscheidt
authors.forename: M R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Fischer
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Schäfer
mesh_terms: 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