Engaging Global Health Pedagogy: The Story Behind an Transborder online problem-based learning course between Canadian and Haitian Occupational Therapy Students

This cross-sectional study investigated performances of two consecutive cohorts of second year dental students on completion of a conventional didactic course and two succeeding cohorts of second year dental students on a recently introduced problem-based learning (PBL) course at The University of Liverpool School of Dentistry. A 40 part true/false questionnaire tested recall of factual knowledge in anatomy, biochemistry, oral biology and physiology. The results showed no significant difference in the total scores when negatively marked between the conventional and PBL course groups but higher total scores in the PBL groups when positively marked. Performances in anatomy, oral biology and physiology did not differ between the groups when negatively marked but the scores of the conventional course groups in biochemistry were significantly lower than the others. With positive marking biochemistry scores were not significantly different but all other subjects were significantly higher in the PBL course groups. The PBL course groups offered fewer blank responses than the conventional course groups but the ratio of correct to incorrect responses, for both definite and intelligent guess responses, were similar in these groups. The compositional profile of the study groups was similar with respect to educational background but the PBL course groups included more females and more older students. The results of this study show that the overall knowledge recall in the basic sciences by dental students on PBL or conventional didactic courses does not differ and may be helpful to those considering the introduction of PBL into the curriculum.

The importance of active learning has continued to increase in Japan. The authors conducted classes for first-year students who entered the nursing program using the problem-based learning method which is a kind of active learning. Students discussed social topics in classes. The purposes of this study were to analyze the post-class essay, describe logical and critical thinking after attended a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) course. The authors used Mayring’s methodology for qualitative content analysis and text mining. In the description about the skills required to resolve social issues, seven categories were extracted: (recognition of diverse social issues), (attitudes about resolving social issues), (discerning the root cause), (multi-lateral information processing skills), (making a path to resolve issues), (processivity in dealing with issues), and (reflecting). In the description about communication, five categories were extracted: (simple statement), (robust theories), (respecting the opponent), (communication skills), and (attractive presentations). As the result of text mining, the words extracted more than 100 times included “issue,” “society,” “resolve,” “myself,” “ability,” “opinion,” and “information.” Education using PBL could be an effective means of improving skills that students described, and communication in general. Some students felt difficulty of communication resulting from characteristics of Japanese.

Background: Problem based learning (PBL) is used increasingly in undergraduate medical education, but there are few postgraduate medical studies. Aim: To compare SHO learning outcomes for a PBL course with...

Students’ academic misconduct has been an issue in medical education and is more likely with development of technology (1, 2). We investigated the occurrence of plagiarism by medical students in a problem-based learning (PBL) course. The participants were a cohort of Year 1 students in the 4-year medical program (n=53) at Dongguk University Medical School in South Korea. Of these students, 38.5% were female and 61.5% were male. Of these, 60% were graduate-entry students and 40% were undergraduate-entry students. Student ages ranged from 19 to 33 years (M=24.13, SD=3.19). The students turned in papers after self-study of topics on the PBL module. The plagiarism detection program offered by the university was used for the investigation. Thirty-three students (62%) plagiarized, mainly copying and pasting websites found using Google, a Korean search engine, or the one offered by a Korean medical center. As a result of such extensive use of limited resources and searching the Internet using similar keywords, contents of the papers were very similar. In another assignment, students wrote their reflections on ethical issues raised in the module. Seventeen students (32%) plagiarized papers written by their peers; some of them copied and pasted others’ work and in some cases they used ideas from what their peers had written. In addition, we conducted one-on-one interviews with all of the students who were found to have plagiarized to investigate their patterns and perceptions of plagiarism. We found that most of the students were not aware that copying information from the website without proper citation of sources was considered plagiarism, and they were not aware that copying reports of their peers was a serious problem. In addition, most of the students copied papers written by their peers who were neither in their social network nor in the same PBL group. Our study indicates that plagiarism in PBL is as prevalent as in other conventional courses and that its occurrence differs according to the type of assignment. In addition, all students should be monitored across PBL groups for detection of plagiarism because they likely copy papers written by peers in other PBL groups or those outside of their social networks. In conclusion, it is suggested that students should be educated on plagiarism to enhance their awareness of what it is and how to avoid it. A variety of educational interventions may be available to teach about plagiarism to medical students – from conventional lectures to online tutorials. In addition, students need to be offered various learning resources for their self-study in order to prevent student plagiarism. Offering diverse, quality learning resources is fundamental to fostering an effective learning environment for PBL (3), and this can also encourage students to use diverse resources instead of merely copying and pasting content from simple Internet search in writing up papers.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate students' perceptions of the extent to which faculty-generated learning objectives were addressed in a problem-based learning (PBL) course. Twenty-seven students enrolled in a 12-week PBL course were randomly divided by age, gender, and grade point average into four tutorial groups. Each group rated on a 10-cm visual analog scale their perceptions of how well they believed the objectives for each of four cases were addressed. Repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to test the average differences among the tutorial groups for each case. Further, post hoc tests were performed to compare the means among groups for each objective. No significant differences were found in the average perceptions among the tutorial groups for any of the four cases. Student ratings indicated their overall perception that within each problem, preset objectives had been met. The results support that students' interpretations of learning objectives for PBL cases are consistent with the problem developers' intended learning objectives. In addition, the similarities in the average scores for learning objectives across the four tutorial groups support the notion that PBL outcomes can be consistent among students, even though their study and discussions are in separate groups with different facilitators.

Abstract— Project-based learning or Problem- based learning (PBL) is an effective student-focused, inquiry-driven teaching method which helps in enhancing knowledge acquisition and retention. PBL is identified with 5 principles: Problem identification and analysis, Project organization, Teamwork, Student-centeredness, and Project assessment. For the PBL implementation to be successful, it is important to have the course aligned with these 5 PBL principles. The context of this study is an undergraduate engineering course in its first year called; “Design Thinking for Social Innovation” offered in the author`s university. While the course majorly followed the PBL pedagogy, it lacked student ownership of learning and followed classroom teaching. Therefore, this study aims to promote student ownership of learning and assess its effect on their capacity to self-regulate their learning by developing content for students’ self-study in the online mode. To address the gap, the content of three modules was curated for online access and deliver the sessions in a flipped mode. This online intervention of learning material was offered to 35 students while the remaining 35 students took up the in-person version of the course. Both groups solved societal problems with immersive community engagement. A two-group design was used to study the impact of the intervention. The difference in self-regulated learning was measured using the existing questionnaire administered online at the end of the semester. Quantitative analysis using Mann-Whitney test was performed on the data. Results of the study reveal that statistically significant differences in SRL between the two groups for specific constructs, notably in Monitoring and Evaluation, where the flipped classroom showed an advantage in monitoring skills, while the inperson classroom demonstrated better performance in evaluation and planning skills. However, the faculty experience of conducting the course in flipped mode revealed that students owned their learning, which was evident through in-class discussions. Further, the authors aver that the success of PBL courses, especially at firstyear of undergraduate engineering largely depends on the effort and time the faculty can invest, often beyond scheduled class hours. The authors conclude that that students' capacity to self-regulate their learning was unaffected by the implementation of flipped learning in a course that was already using the PBL format.Further refinement of the flipped PBL approach may be needed to optimize performance across all SRL constructs. Keywords-Problem-based learning, flipped classroom, design thinking for social innovation, student ownership, PBL principles.

In this study we designed, implemented, and evaluated a Problem-based Learning (PBL) course to teach undergraduate students about Viral Hepatitis from a Health Geography perspective. The course was attended by undergraduate students with no previous experience with PBL from a college in the Brazilian Amazon state of Acre. The course design was based on a combination of features from different PBL frameworks, allowing the students to gradually switch from a content-centered educational environment to a student-centered one. The PBL unit was based on an ill-structured real-life problem concerning the division of a hypothetical budget among actions to fight Viral Hepatitis in the state’s municipalities. Student problem solutions indicated that they learned basic Viral Hepatitis and Health Geography concepts. Furthermore, perceptions of their own learning demonstrated that students regarded their acquired problem-solving skills and their knowledge of the course subject as their main educational outcomes. We argue that the combination of different PBL frameworks, the gradual transition from lectures to active learning and the social relevance of the course subject to students are among the putative factors that contributed to the course’s success. This study, therefore, provides insights into the design of PBL courses for students inexperienced in active learning.

ABSTRACTThis study adopted a longitudinal retrospective case study approach to investigate Chinese business students’ transitional learning experience in a problem-based learning (PBL) course with innovative assessment practices. The study focused on students’ beliefs and strategy use in a constructively aligned PBL course for business communication. Eight students who had made notable progress were chosen for retrospective analysis. The data included 48 journal entries, interviews, and writing samples collected at different stages of the course. This study identified taxonomies of participants’ beliefs about learning and writing, their perceptions of assessment, and their strategy use for learning. It also examined changes in beliefs, perceptions, and strategy use to determine the nature of the students’ learning experience in this PBL course. Findings suggest a recognised need to design PBL courses that align social constructivist learning principles with students’ beliefs and strategies. The results also highlight the importance of developing appropriate assessment rubrics to enhance student engagement with PBL learning for improved outcomes.

The foundation courses in computer science pose particular challenges for teacher and learner alike. This paper describes some of these challenges and how we have designed problem-based learning (PBL) courses to address them. We discuss the particular problems we were keen to overcome: the purely technical focus of many courses; the problems of individual learning and the need to establish foundations in a range of areas which are important for computer science graduates. We then outline our course design, showing how we have created problem-based learning courses. The paper reports our evaluation of the approach. This has two parts: assessment of a trial, with a three-year longitudinal follow-up of the students; reports of student learning improve-ment after we had become experienced in full implementation of PBL. We conclude with a summary of our experience over three years of PBL teaching and discuss some of the pragmatic issues around introducing the radical change in teaching, maintaining staff support, and continuing refinement of our PBL teaching. We also discuss some of our approaches to the commonly acknowledged challenges of PBL teaching.

Developing a sound online problem-based learning (PBL) course plan is difficult because teachers need comprehensive PBL and technical knowledge. This paper proposes a model-driven approach to develop a PBL authoring tool that helps teachers create and customize online PBL course plans in a cost-effective and flexible manner. A pilot study was conducted to assess teacher acceptance of the tool. The results reveal that after a short training session, teachers understood the authoring tool and thought the tool was easy to use to develop online PBL course plans.

SummaryDesigning problems for problem-based learning (PBL) courses in engineering has always been a challenging task, especially in environments where the only method of imparting technical education has been through traditional a lecture/tutorial/practical (LfTfP) approach. This paper describes the cognitive and pedagogical issues involved in conducting a PBL course in analogue electronics, designing of problems, analyses of solutions submitted by the student groups and how learning objectives were achieved. It also presents a detailed analysis of the problem statements designed and open-ended metacognitive triggers built on PBL students thinking, to understand how the facilitator supported the collaborative knowledge construction. The knowledge and skill tests scores of both the traditional and PBL threads are presented and compared.

This paper is aimed at finding if there was a change of correlation between the written test score and tutors’ performance test scores in the assessment of medical students during a problem-based learning (PBL) course in Malaysia. This is a cross-sectional observational study, conducted among 264 medical students in two groups from November 2010 to November 2012. The first group’s tutors did not receive tutor training; while the second group’s tutors were trained in the PBL process. Each group was divided into high, middle and low achievers based on their end-of-semester exam scores. PBL scores were taken which included written test scores and tutors’ performance test scores. Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated between the two kinds of scores in each group. The correlation coefficient between the written scores and tutors’ scores in group 1 was 0.099 (p<0.001) and for group 2 was 0.305 (p<0.001). The higher correlation coefficient in the group where tutors received the PBL training reinforces the importance of tutor training before their participation in the PBL course.

Objective On the issues of students' lack of representative collection of literature in problem-based learning (PBL) courses of TCM integrated experiments, to try to explore the litera-ture studying and reading route. Method Totally 41 full-time seven-year medical postgraduate of Shanghai University of TCM were randomly divided into two PBL classes, that are class A (n=20) an class B (n=21). Three PBL units were carried out in class A and class B by parallel; the oriented literatures were provided by tutors alternately, and after PBL courses, the appraisal were performed by students and tutors independently, using SPSS 19.0 for data analysis, t test to compare between groups. Results First, the students' assessment indicated that the 75% (15/20) students of Class A and 80.9% (17/21) students of Class B of class gave a good evaluation of the teaching method. Two classes had more than 80% of the students who thought the literature teachers provided was representative and instructive and over 60.0% students of both classes thought that the teaching measures could improve the classroom efficiency and after-school learning efficiency. The tutors' assessment revealed that there were no significantly differences between the quantity of these references in PPT(P>0.05)made by students in A class and B class in PBL unit 2 and unit 3; but an increasing trend did exist after the leading literatures were provided and the discussions among students were focusing and rele-vant and the teaching goal was achieved. Conclusion The route of providing a small amount of oriented literatures by tutor is positive in PBL courses of TCM integrated experiments, while the design of teaching experiment, the specific way of providing oriented literatures, the quantity and quality of literatures, and even the internal connection between them, all needs further optimization. Key words: TCM integrated experiments; Problem-based learning; Literature; Route

Purpose: Problem-based learning (PBL) is an educational method that fosters self-directed study in small groups. The purpose of this study was to describe the Tel Aviv University’s occupational therapy (OT) program and the challenges implementing such program. In addition, the study compared the PBL grades obtained by students who are native Hebrew speakers with those students who are native Arabic speakers; and, assessed the correlation between the grades in the PBL course and the grades in the clinical fieldwork studies.Method: 166-second year OT undergraduate students participated. All completed three PBL courses and seven weeks of clinical fieldwork studies. Data collection included students’ grades in PBL course (based on PBL evaluation forms) and in clinical fieldwork studies (based on preceptor’s evaluation and a written assignment).Results: Pearson correlations revealed significant correlations between PBL grades and clinical fieldwork studies grades. T-test analysis between students who are native Hebrew speakers and those who are native Arabic speakers revealed significant differences in PBL grades.Conclusions: Findings imply partial congruence between students’ grades in the PBL course and their achievements in the fieldwork studies. Findings might suggest that adjustments should be made in order to assist students from minorities (challenged by language requirements) in gaining higher grades in the PBL program.Implications for RehabilitationProblem-Based Learning (PBL) is an educational method, which fosters independent, self-directed study in small groups.PBL studies have the potential to prepare students for their clinical experience during studies.The PBL program should be adjusted for students from minorities (challenged by language requirements and different cultural backgrounds) in order to assist them in gaining more benefits from the program.

The Department of Mechanical Engineering of Yonago National College of Technology has recently introduced a Problem Based Learning (PBL) course for the first-grade students. Its purpose is to enhance the students′ interest to the mechanical engineering and to develop the students′ learning ability and creativity. In this paper, we have assessed long-term educational effects of the PBL course by questionnaire survey to third-grade and fifth-grade students. The results have shown that higher grades students consider the PBL course is effective to develop creativity and improve their attitude toward cooperation by group works. Some students also think the PBL course is helpful in understanding the specialized subjects.