Medical Students' Perceptions of a Curricular Shift at a South African University: from problem-based learning to modified case-based learning
Bibliographic record
Abstract
<strong>Introduction:</strong> Problem-based learning (PBL) and case-based learning (CBL) are two widely used pedagogical approaches to small-group learning (SGL) in medical education. They offer comparable learner benefits; however, the implementation of these approaches vary considerably, resulting in institution-specific educational outcomes and learner experiences. The aim of this study was to evaluate the delivery of these two teaching methods at a single university in South Africa in the context of a curriculum shift in response to local pedagogical needs and resource constraints. <strong>Method: </strong>Medical Students at the University of the Witwatersrand were surveyed in their final year of the curriculum (MBBCh Year 6) regarding their experiences of both PBL and modified-CBL (mCBL) during their preclinical years (MBBCh Year 3 and Year 4 respectively). A total of 322 students were invited to complete a questionnaire designed to identify their educational background (whether graduate entry or high-school leaver) and their perceptions of PBL in comparison to mCBL as well as potential improvements to both pedagogies. <strong>Results: </strong>There was no significant difference between students who preferred PBL (<em>n</em>=63, 34.1%), mCBL (<em>n</em>=64, 34.6%), or ‘neither’ (<em>n</em>=58, 31.4%) mode of study (<em>P</em> = 0.449). Where students found that the respective learning method prepared them for clinical practice, they were more than twice as likely to select that method over neither option (PBL OR 3.3; 95% CI 1.6-6.8 P=0.001) (mCBL OR 2.3; 95% CI 1.2-4.5 P=0.014). Furthermore, the majority of the students agreed that the background and expertise of facilitators were important to their learning experiences. For both PBL and mCBL, 79% of students preferred clinician facilitators and facilitators who were content experts (PBL - 77% and mCBL - 81%). <strong>Conclusions: </strong>Medical students who experienced a curricular transition between two SGL methods did not prefer either teaching method over the other. This study highlights the need for institutions to explore and address context-specific challenges and expectations around SGL implementation both before and after adopting any curricular change.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.058 | 0.004 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".