Which medical students enjoy problem-based learning?

Objective: To determine relationships between student personality and learning styles and their satisfaction with components of the PBL process. Method: A questionnaire was sent to 137 students in a PBL centred undergraduate medical course. Personality and Learning Styles were assessed with standard questionnaires. Satisfaction with PBL as a teaching method was assessed by a 26-item questionnaire that asked about the utility and enjoyment of the various components of the PBL process. Principle component analysis was used to examine relationships between the variables. Result: Factor analysis showed two clearly distinguishable factors. Factor 1 (26% variance), labelled Personal Learning, related to whether students felt PBL helped them personally in clarifying and remembering new information; Factor 2 (16% variance), labelled Contribution to Case Discussion, related to whether students enjoyed and found it useful to take part in the PBL group and found it useful to make suggestions about the case. Students who found it easy to learn from PBL tended to be more conscientious and more open to experience, with higher deep learning scores and lower surface learning scores. In contrast those who found it easy to contribute to case discussions tended to be less neurotic and more agreeable, and to have higher deep learning scores, and, somewhat surprisingly, lower strategic learning scores. Conclusion: Students who enjoy PBL and find it effective share certain personality and learner types. This has potential implications for the implementation and evaluation of PBL in medical schools and the wider education system.