Assessment of Effectiveness of Problem Based Learning Pedagogical Approach in Radiography Education in a Tertiary Institution in Ghana

Abstract

A newly accredited department to train Radiographers in the college of health sciences, University of Cape Coast, Ghana was motivated by the great success story of graduating Doctors from the medical school of the same college that uses Problem-Based Learning (PBL) as the main pedagogy. Therefore, the new Radiography department decided to use PBL as the main mode of pedagogy for the training of the radiographers. This study seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of the PBL mode of pedagogy from students’ perspective so that lessons can be learnt thereof. A questionnaire was used to gather responses from 272 students (190 males, 82 females) reading diagnostic imaging technology (Radiography) and diagnostic medical sonography programmes. The results showed 100% response rate from the respondents. On whether students prefer PBL to traditional lectures, 32.5% agreed, 63.2% strongly agreed with only 2.2% and 1.5% who disagreed and strongly disagreed respectively and 0.7% neither agreed nor disagreed. Also, 52.2% and 36.4% of the respondents agreed that PBL develops competence and confidence in self-directed learning, 37.5% and 55.5% respondents further strongly agreed to the same set of statements. However only 4.4% and 2.6% respectively disagreed with the same set of statements with 2.2% and 3.3% respectively neither agreed nor disagreed. Majority (59.1%) of the students identified inadequate resources to carry out the PBL activities as their main challenge with PBL. Therefore, from the students’ perspective, PBL mode of pedagogy is appropriate for radiography education, it is high-quality and has significantly impacted on students clinical understanding, retention of information, presentation, health promotion and skills development.