http://repub.eur.nl/res/aut/435/ List of Publications en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/2679/ 1997-01-01T00:00:00Z Although clinical clerkships are an important and essential part of any medical training program, medical schools' policy makers seem to exert little control on the educational effectiveness of clerkships. However, educational quality of clerkships may be assured and improved by using information from evaluation. The success of the usefulness of evaluation results is clearly associated with the fulfilment of a number of conditions: willingness to adopt a critical attitude, willingness to analyse the existing situation, opportunities to discuss and carry on a dialogue, availability of a plan of action and continuous collection of evaluative data. This paper describes these conditions and the way in which they were translated in the context of clinical clerkships. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/2690/ 1995-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/2693/ 1995-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/2701/ 1994-07-01T00:00:00Z A major assumption of problem-based learning (PBL) is that learning issues, generated by students while discussing a problem, are used as guides for self-directed learning activities. This assumption, though basic to PBL, has never been tested. At the University of Limburg, the Netherlands, two procedures have been developed that reflect the extent to which students are able to identify important learning issues given a particular problem, and whether subsequent, independent, learning corresponds with these learning issues. The focus of the present article will be on the relationship between the two. We have explored to what extent student-generated learning issues are a major factor influencing the nature of students' self-study, or whether other factors may be involved in decisions on what to study and how much time to spend on topics selected. First, the production of learning issues was studied and represented as the percentage of overlap between learning issues raised by students and pre-set faculty objectives for each problem. The second procedure consisted of the administration of a 'Topic Checklist' (TOC) which purports to measure students' actual self-directed learning activities. The TOC consists of a list of topics specifying the intended course content. Students were asked to indicate on a five-point Likert scale how much time they had spent studying each topic and to what degree they had mastered that topic. Third, learning issues and TOC topics were compared directly in a qualitative sense. Comparisons between the procedures revealed that a low proportion of variance of TOC scores could be predicted from the percentage of faculty objectives identified for each problem and the direct match between learning issues and TOC scores. It is concluded that scrutinizing student-generated learning issues and topics covered during self-study may provide information about what content is covered by students in tutorial groups. The discrepancy between the results of the measurements suggests, however, that learning issues produced during group discussion are not the sole source on which students base self-study decisions. Several other factors may be involved, such as tutor guidance, content already covered in previous units, issues raised during sessions with resource persons, and the nature of the learning resources available. Therefore, the relationship between learning issues and content covered during self-study is not as straightforward as is suggested. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/2704/ 1994-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/2713/ 1993-12-03T00:00:00Z In order to measure instructional quality, several methods have been proposed in the literature, among them student performance on achievement tests and student ratings of the quality of instruction. Both methods have in common that they tend to ignore course content coverage, although this is an important determinant of instructional quality. In this article a procedure is described which is used to assess students' actual learning activities. This procedure, the Topic Checklist, makes use of student ratings. Reliability, validity, and utility studies were conducted. The results suggest that the Topic Checklist is a reliable and fairly valid procedure to evaluate course content coverage and to detect problem areas in a course, providing feedback useful for carrying out improvements. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/2712/ 1993-01-01T00:00:00Z Background. Problem-based learning (PBL) emphasizes active generation of learning issues by students. Both students and reachers, however, tend to worry that not all important knowledge will be acquired. To explore this question, problem effectiveness (i.e., for each problem, the degree of correspondence between student-generated learning issues and preset faculty objectives) was examined in three interdependent studies. Method. The three studies used the same participants: about 120 second-year students and 12 faculty tutors in a six-week course on normal pregnancy, delivery, and child development at the medical school of the University of Limburg in The Netherlands, 1990-91. The participants were randomly assigned to 12 tutorial groups that were each given the same 12 problems; the problems were based on 51 faculty objectives; the tutors were asked to record all learning issues generated by their groups. Study 1 addressed this question: To what degree are faculty objectives reflected by student-generated learning issues? Study 2: To what extent do students miss certain objectives, and are these objectives classifiable? Study 3: Do students generate learning issues not expected by the faculty, and are these issues relevant to course content, and finally, why do students generate these issues? To help answer these questions, the studies employed expert raters and a teacher familiar with the course content. Results. Study 1: For the set of 12 problems, the average overlap between learning issues and faculty objectives was 64.2%, with the percentages for individual problems ranging from 27.7% to 100%. Study 2: Of the 51 objectives, 30 were not identified by at least one tutorial group; these objectives were grouped into three categories; on average, each group failed to identify 7.4 objectives (15%). Study 3: Of 520 learning issues, 32 (6%) were unexpected; 15 of these were judged to be at least fairly relevant to course content; they were grouped into four categories. Conclusions. The students' learning activities covered an average of 64% of the intended course content; in addition, the students generated learning issues not expected by the faculty, and half of these issues were judged relevant to the course content. Thus, PBL seems to permit students to adapt learning activities to their own needs and interests. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/2716/ 1993-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/2769/ 1993-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/2776/ 1990-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/2738/ 1986-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/2740/ 1985-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/2742/ 1984-01-01T00:00:00Z