gms | German Medical Science

Purpose: Problem based learning (PBL) is a well-established student-centered learning method in medical education [1]. Creating high quality cases is crucial for successful PBL teaching. To achieve and maintain this high quality, we developed a web-based evaluation tool to record immediate responses and comments from students and facilitators as well as to document the learning objectives of each PBL group.

Methods: A user friendly web tool was designed using the script language php and programmed W3C conform [2] to ensure compatibility with all operating systems compliant with this international standard. The form asks for the rating of each student and the facilitator on a 4-point scale. Two text entry fields are supplied for submission of learning objectives and comments. Entry of learning objectives is mandatory. Data collected with this tool are stored in a text file-database, one file for each case, each line representing one group's data. Hence handling even of large numbers of PBL groups is rather comfortable. Concurrently a file with comma-separated values (csv-file) is generated, allowing import of the collected data into a spreadsheet program at any time during and after the course. For a quick estimate of the results a character based display of the evaluation data is given at the bottom of the form.

Results and Conclusion: The evaluation data collected during the first semester of the academic year 2004/2005 show that

1.

facilitators tend to evaluate the cases somewhat better than students,

2.

two PBL cases out of 18 strongly deviate from average scores, one case each evaluated very low and very high,

3.

facilitators' response rate was 38% and

4.

16% of facilitators added comments.

This web-based evaluation tool offers qualified feedback for the editorial board creating the paper cases and also gives an indication of the facilitators' commitment.