What happens in PBL tutorial sessions? Analysis of medical students' written accounts

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the quality of tutorial sessions in the new PBL curriculum that was adopted at the University of Tampere, Finland, in 1994. The material consisted of open-ended accounts of successful and unsuccessful tutorial sessions obtained from 75 first-year medical students. A novel 'collective consensus method' was developed in which a group of four tutors examined the written accounts in five stages. Eight categories of successful and nine categories of unsuccessful sessions were identified. Successful tutorials seemed to rely most crucially on balanced discussions between the students and careful preparation for the session. The tutor should take an interest in the group's learning but not intervene too much. The 'collective consensus method' proved to be a useful tool of action research concerned with developing academic education. In Tampere the method will be used in further assessments of the quality of tutorial sessions.