DOES THE DISCIPLINE of the TUTOR Affect STUDENT
PERFORMANCE ON ASSESSMENTS IN A MODIFIED PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING (PBL)
CURRICULUM?
Peter T. Borgia*, Ph.D. Department of Medical
Microbiology, Immunology and Cell Biology,
Southern Illinois University, School of Medicine, Springfield, IL
62794-1220 U.S.A.
PBL tutors often show at least some discomfort in managing student
discussion of PBL cases where the learning issues range outside their area
of content expertise. This is
true for both basic scientists and physicians.
In addition, students often voice concerns about the area of
content expertise of the tutor. The
pre-clerkship curriculum at Southern Illinois University School of
Medicine
employs a backbone of “modified” small group PBL sessions.
A limited number of large group lecture/discussion sessions and
other curricular materials such as self-assessment questions (SAQs) are
used, for a variety of reasons, to augment the PBL sessions.
The PBL sessions are “modified” insofar as tutors are provided
with learning issues for each PBL case and, if necessary, tutors guide
discussion to ensure student coverage of important learning issues.
A curricular unit entitled “Hematology, Immunology and
Infection” (HII) begins the second year curriculum.
Basic scientist PBL tutors for the unit are drawn form the
disciplines of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pharmacology.
The clinicians that tutor in the unit are Infectious Disease
sub-specialists. At the
completion of the HII unit a multiple choice exam (MCQ) composed of 200
questions is administered covering aspects of the disciplines of
Microbiology, Immunology, Pharmacology and Pathology that are relevant to
the unit. We have analyzed
individual student performance on questions from each discipline as a
function of the discipline of each student’s tutor.
The results from a single year (72 students) indicate that there is
no significant difference in student performance in any discipline that
could be attributed to tutor discipline.
Results from the analysis of three curricular years will be
presented at the IAMSE meeting.
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