Biomedical subjects

Diana H.J.M. Dolmans

Publications and source records attributed to Diana H.J.M. Dolmans.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

Student perceptions about the occurrence of critical incidents in tutorial groups.

The study reported here examines student perceptions about the occurrence of critical incidents in tutorial groups across years of medical training. The study investigates the following research questions. (1) Which factors underlie the occurrence of critical incidents in the tutorial group? (2) How do students rate the incidents with respect to whether they occur in the tutorial groups? (3) Are there differences in scores on the factors identified across years of medical training? The subjects consisted of a stratified random sample of 200 students at the Medical School of the University of Maastricht. In general, the results of the confirmatory factor analyses indicate that a six-factor model showed a good fit. The results show that students frequently perceive lack of elaboration, lack of interaction and unequal participation in tutorial groups. For most of the factors (lack of elaboration, difficult personalities, lack of cohesion, and lack of motivation) the average scores differ significantly (p<0.01) across the years.

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PubMed2001

Quality of student-generated learning issues in a problem-based curriculum.

In a problem-based curriculum students generate learning issues that are the guidelines for their individual study. In an earlier study it was found that a useful learning issue contains a keyword that demarcates the content of a certain topic to be studied and is formulated concisely and unambiguously for all members of the tutorial group. This study investigates two questions. First, how many learning issues can be classified as being of good or bad quality as evaluated against three criteria? Second, what are examples of well and badly formulated learning issues? Learning issues were collected for two problems in the first year during two tutorial meetings of the Maastricht Medical School in the academic year 1998-99. In the next academic year, 12 first year-students were asked to judge the learning issues for each problem against three criteria. The results showed that 21% of the learning issues for one problem and 32% for the other problem were classified as scoring high on all three characteristics. A very small percentage of learning issues (5% and 2%) were classified as scoring low on all three characteristics. Most learning issues scored differently on each of the characteristics. Although most learning issues contain a keyword, many of them were formulated ambiguously and not concisely. It is concluded that first-year students are not yet able to formulate clear learning issues.

Journal Article↗

PubMed1998

Assessing Students in Community Settings: The Role of Peer Evaluation.

The assessment of students in community settings faces unique difficulties. Since students are usually posted in small groups in different community settings and since the learning (largely) takes place outside the classroom, assessing student performance becomes an intrinsically complex endeavor. In this article, the proposition is made and tested that peers may be used to accurately assess particular aspects of performance, in particular those which need extensive and close observation. Examples are: Effort displayed while working in a community, quality of the interaction with that community, display of leadership, and subject-matter contributions.The Faculty of Medicine of the University of Gezira, a community-based medical school, uses peer evaluation to assess these attributes of its students. Thirty four students divided into three groups participated in the present study. Goals of the study were to appraise the reliability, validity and acceptability of an instrument designed to measure these characteristics. Reliability was estimated using generalizability theory. A high generalizability coefficient (G) was found when all items were taken into account. In this case, G equaled 0.97. Its sub-scales each had also fairly high G-coefficients: Effort: 0.89, Subject-matter Contribution: 0.91, Community Interaction: 0.89, and Leadership: 0,88 respectively. The validity of the instrument was studied using confirmatory factor analysis. The results suggested that the proposed model of peer evaluation is reasonably valid. Finally, the instrument turned out to be quite acceptable to students.

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