Curricular Change and the Learning Approaches of Medical Students

Abstract

We read with great interest the recent article in your journal by Mogre and Amalba about the learning approaches of Ghanian students who followed a problem-based learning, Communitybased education and service-based (PBLCOBES) medical curriculum [1]. Determining students’ preferred, ongoing and contextual approaches to learning can provide a good idea about the presage, process and product levels of Bigg’s “Presage-Process-Product (3P) model” of the learning process [2]. Learning approaches should therefore not be viewed as stable characteristics of students; rather their value in reflecting the learning environment should be recognized and utilized. The authors have rightly determined their students’ learning approaches to judge the impact of the new curriculum. We had studied the learning approaches of first year medical students belonging to medical colleges in South India following a discipline based, non-PBL curriculum [3, 4]. The majority of our medical students had a deep learning approach and there was a positive correlation between deep approach scores and the marks obtained in a Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) examination containing questions that tested understanding, application and recall [3] and between surface learning approach scores and the Perceived Stress Scale scores [4]. To us, this reiterated the importance of students adopting a deep learning approach that focuses on understanding and relating new information to prior knowledge. © Medical Education Department, School of Medical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia. All rights reserved. Curricular Change and the Learning Approaches of Medical Students