Research On The Role Behaviors Of Tutor From PBL In Medicine

Problem-Based Leaming (PBL) was developed by professor Barrows who was a neurology in Amercian. PBL was fristly put into practiced in McMaster University in Canada. The aim of PBL was to enable students to intergrate existing knowledge and learn new knowledge independently in the process of problem-sloving. The change of teacher role behavior in the PBL teaching is more common and critical issue. The aim of this study was to investigate the transition of teachers from being classroom instructors to being PBL tutors, to identify effective behaviors based on the learning strategies of PBL sessions, and to make recommendations to the tutors and medical schools for enhancing the quality of PBL.A questionnaire survey was conducted to obtain the views of students and PBL tutors regarding the roles of tutors. A 5-point Likert scale was used to address five issues: the problem design, the frame work support, the guidance of PBL, the encouragement of student participation, and the evaluation and feedback. The subjects of the study were the students and tutors of Shantou University Medical College, Tongji Medical University and China Medical School who have participated in PBL activities. A total of 72 and 320 valid questionnaire responses were collected from tutors and students respectively. In addition, we interviewed 5 tutors using a structured guideline and 16 students in a conference format. From the result, we found that the gender, medical program type, and familiarity with PBL of students showed significance effects on the results; The work experience and length of teaching of the tutors had significance effects on the results; The mean scores of students'evaluations of tutor role behaviors were from 3.62 to 3.96, while those of the tutors were between 3.97 and 4.33. The differences between the mean scores of these 5 issues were statistically significant. The difference between the mean scores of'the problem design'and'the evaluation and feedback'were higher than'the frame work support'and'the guidance of PBL'given by the tutors and the students were both statistically significant. The correlation between the scores given by the students and tutors was analyzed and it was not statistically significant. The results suggest that the role behaviors of the tutors changed from one of a single dimension to a multi-faceted dimension, the tutors played very important roles in the problem design stage and the concluding stage. However, their roles were slightly weaker in the problem awareness and the guidance of PBL sessions, the tutors and students were not in an agreement regarding PBL. This indicates that the background of students and tutors affected the identification of tutors in role behaviors;Based on the above issues and factors, We recommend that measures be taken to facilitate the change of the role behaviors of the tutors in PBL following three aspects: From the school level, the reflections of teachers should be strengthened, and organizing training for teachers; From the teacher level, the sharing and discussion of teaching practice should be strengthened, strengthening the problem awareness enhancing capacity of the guidance, promoting communication between tutors and students for consensus; From the student level, to enable students to participate actively in evaluation of teaching effectiveness, to help students overcome psychological barriers and to meet students'need using different teaching formats.