PERCEPTION OF DENTAL STUDENTS ABOUT PBL METHOD FOR CONSTRUCTIVE LEARNING

Mehwish Feroz Ali; Saima Akram Butt; Maryam Basim

Background: Problem Based Learning (PBL) is a widely used constructive teaching approach for undergraduate Medical and Dental students for many years. This is an effective teaching tool which integrates students' prior knowledge which he/she has obtained in their initial years and applies it for solving actual clinical cases which they usually encounter in the clinical rotations.This exercise broadens their thinking and learning capacity and makes them active, self-directed and vigilant learners. They also learn how to work in a team and collectively come up with the best possible answers of the given clinical scenario. Objectives: The main objective of this study is to evaluate dental students' perception regarding Problem Based Learning (PBL), which is a fruitful teaching strategy for student's effective professional development and also to assess the extent students benefit from this teaching method and to help them develop professional skills and attitude. Method: A cross sectional study was conducted amongst the Dental students of all (four) years of Bachelors of Dental Surgery (BDS) from Aug to Sep 2017 at Ziauddin University (College of Dentistry), Karachi, Pakistan. A Verbal consent was taken from all the students and each student was asked to fill a 21-item questionnaire for evaluating their perceptions about PBL teaching methodology. The students' response about PBL was measured by a 5 point Likert scale. The statistical analysis of data was calculated by SPSS version 20. Percentage and frequencies were calculated for qualitative data and Mean/SD for quantitative statistics. ANOVA was applied to suggested strong association between PBL and development of professional attitude and skills. The p-value of > 0.05 was statistically significant. Results: Students' thoughts regarding PBL as an effective teaching strategy were assenting. They positively benefited from this learning method which is represented by mean scores of = 3 in the study. The mean score of 1.85 (<2) indirectly highlights that students are not wasting their time by performing this exercise. There is a significant association between PBL method and development of professional attitude and skills by p-value of < 0.00001 Conclusion: It aids the medical educators to perform internal evaluation to record students' progress in every module for marking their final assessment.