An analysis of progress test results of PBL and non-PBL students

This study compares the academic achievement of students from two Dutch medical schools, one employing problem-based learning (PBL) and one non-PBL methods. Two progress tests were administered to 1904 PBL students and 1089 non-PBL students. No systematic differences were found on total test scores. After the test was split into three categories (basic, clinical and social sciences), a few, non-systematic differences were found. To some extent the basic sciences favoured the non-PBL curriculum and the social sciences the PBL curriculum, but this was not consistent for both test administrations. Also, the profiles for both schools at the level of disciplines show remarkable resemblances. Only at the level of individual questions could differences between PBL and non-PBL be demonstrated. The results obtained in this study strongly agree with those of previous comparisons between medical schools but indicate that effects of PBL and non-PBL instructional methods on medical factual knowledge are even more similar than we had previously thought.