PBL Scenario Bank

Dear Sir

We intended to collect good scenarios into a PBL Scenario Bank by choosing three scenarios purposefully and tried them out to a tutors’ group and three groups of students. Eight tutors were chosen based on their involvement in PBL and their critiques. Eight students per group were chosen based on their critiques to PBL, availability, and level of study.

Participants discussed the scenarios based on the following questions:

1. What are the learning objectives (LO) of the scenario?

2. In what year and block the scenario would fit into?

3. What is the scenario's best title?

4. What prior knowledge that students should have?

5. [the facilitator would open the intended LO] After cross checking with the intended LO, what do you think?

6. What would you modify on the scenario?

They assessed the scenarios based on Dolmans et al.'s (1997) principles and Jacobs et al.'s (2003) questionnaire.

Similar to Dolmans et al.'s (1997) principles, participants agreed that good scenarios should activate students’ prior knowledge, stimulate learning, be contextual, and mention clues. Tutors suggested that good scenarios should elaborate the component of triad host–pathogen–environment.

In addition to Dolmans et al.'s (1997) principles, participants agreed that a good scenario should lead to a solution, lead the discussion – but it should not dominate the discussion. Our scenarios were written in English or in Bahasa Indonesia, they suggested that a scenario should have well written English – if it is written in English; have “4 W and 1H” components and intriguing title.

Since Dolmans et al.'s (1997) principles have seven items, we asked participants to score 1–10. Thus, total score of 7 represented a poor scenario and 70 an excellent scenario. Students tended to score higher than tutors (the median of tutors’ were 50, 48, and 55; while students’ were 51, 55.5, and 59.5 for the scenarios I, II, and III). Responses to Jacobs et al.'s questionnaire showed that Scenario I was not too simple, contained too many solutions, and was not too well-structured.

Although Dolmans et al.'s guideline is applicable, we must be aware that basic science scenarios may give low scores. Jacob's questionnaire is pertinent; however the five-point Likert scale may lead to the middle value even if participants disagree with the statements.

Finally, representative tutors and students helped us to validate and collect good scenarios in the PBL Scenario Bank.