(250)THE EFFICACY OF WEB PROBLEM BASED LEARNING VERSUSTRADITIONAL DISCIPLINE LEARNING IN BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES

摘要

Recent years have witnessed the developments of different educational methods in themedical field, including the electronic learning (e-learning) and wed problem-basedlearning (WPBL) approach. These methods are coming in favour over the traditionallearning method, which was a dominated educational method for decades. Here weassess different educational methods in Medical School at Taibah University, KSA.Methods: This is an experimental control study that has been carried out over 2academic years in the Faculty of Medicine, Taibah University, KSA. A 162 students fromthe 5th year of Medical School were involved in the study. Students were studying FamilyMedicine course as a block over 10 weeks. Students were randomly divided into 3groups: (i) Group A, (46 students) studied the course by WPBL, (ii) Group B, (49students) studied the course by WPBL with e-portfolio, and (iii) Group C, (67 students)studied the course with traditional learning. To measure the efficacy of different teachingmethods, the outcome of the final total score (measuring knowledge and clinical skills),the score of problem solving/critical thinking exam, and the total DREEM score(measuring the education environment) were assessed. In addition, the different DREEMelements were also assessed. Data were analyzed using statistical package for socialsciences (SPSS) program. ANOVA test was used to compare different groups with postHoc analysis (bonferroni) as multi-comparison test with significant level (P<0.05). Thestudy was funded by the deanship of scientific research, Taibah University, KSA.Results: All groups were matched for sex and age (P value>0.05), The results ofassessing different teaching methods showed that Group B has the highest score forproblem solving/critical thinking exam (max 100) and total DREEM score (max 200) withmean 84.79±3.45 and 110.46±13.82, respectively. Whereas, Group C showed the lowestscore for problem solving/critical thinking exam and total DREEM score with mean76.97±3.79 and 101.97±15.89, respectively. Comparing means among different groupsA, B, and C using ANOVA test showed a significant differences among different groupswith P value<0.05. The results from the final exam score (max 100) showed that Group Ahas the highest score (mean 70±4.51) and Group C has the lowest score (mean73.57±5.31) with significant difference among different groups (P value 0.011).Multi-comparison test-post Hoc analysis showed that there is a significant differencebetween group B and C (P value=0.014) in the total DREEM score, and there is a highlysignificant difference between group A and C (P value=0.000) for problem solving/criticalthinking exam. Discussion: Here we showed that the web problem based learning hasbetter outcomes compared to traditional learning regarding problem solving, criticalthinking skills, retention of knowledge, in addition to the overall educational environment..Moreover, the present work showed that student’s who studied the family medicinecourse with WPBL method either with or without e-portfolio have better perception ofalmost all educational environmental elements these results are similar to studies in bothmedical and nonmedical literature.