What students learn in problem-based learning: a process analysis.

This study aimed to provide an account of how learning takes place in problem-based learning (PBL), and to identify the relationships between the learning-oriented activities of students with their learning outcomes. First, the verbal interactions and computer resources studied by nine students for an entire PBL cycle were recorded. The relevant concepts articulated and studied individually while working on the problem-at-hand were identified as units of analysis and counted to demonstrate the growth in concepts acquired over the PBL cycle. We identified two distinct phases in the process-an initial concept articulation, and a later concept repetition phase. To overcome the sample-size limitations of the first study, we analyzed the verbal interactions of, and resources studied, by another 35 students in an entire PBL cycle using structural equation modeling. Results show that students' verbal contributions during the problem analysis phase strongly influenced their verbal contributions during self-directed learning and reporting phases. Verbal contributions and individual study influenced similarly the contributions during the reporting phase. Increased verbalizations of concepts during the reporting phase also led to higher achievement. We found that collaborative learning is significant in the PBL process, and may be more important than individual study in determining students' achievement

To what extent do tutor-related behaviours influence student learning in PBL?

The purpose of this study was to investigate how tutor behaviours influence learning in problem-based learning (PBL). A previous study had indicated a significant influence of the tutor's social congruent behaviour on the PBL process and this study further investigates this finding by examining two groups of tutors displaying differences in social congruence. The participants were 77 students under the tutelage of four tutors and a self-report questionnaire ranked two tutors to be more socially congruent as compared to the other two. Student learning was measured by a concept recall test and the results from the analysis of covariance indicated a significant impact of the tutor's social congruent behaviour on learning after the problem analysis phase but not on the self-directed learning and reporting phases. It was concluded that the academic abilities of students and the small number of tutors involved may have affected the results, which led to the second part of this study. A group of 11 tutors were selected and the impact of their behaviours on student achievement measured by the module grade was examined. Results indicated that the tutor behaviours had a greater influence on average students as compared to the academically stronger and weaker students. This finding suggests that students who are academically stronger are not as reliant on the tutor while average students may depend more on the tutor to guide and motivate them in order to achieve the learning goals