Large group teaching: the distance learning solution?

Problem-based learning has been introduced at the University of Liège for four years now. The medical library was committed with the organisation of different activities (60 hours/2 years), starting with the control of basic computer litteracy, continuing with an analysis of the structure of the different document types used for scientific communication as well as the discovery of both traditional and electronic medical libraries, to end with guidelines for information retrieval.

Such courses requested new approaches and several difficulties had to be taken into consideration including :
1. The transfer of skills rather than kowledge. Some theoretical bases have to be taught before practicing. But the students mostly need to be challenged with different situations requesting different approaches of litterature searching.
2. The course is given before the students feel the need of it. The librarians enconter the students during the first semester of the second year before the students are asked to search the medical litterature to build their own knowledge about clinical matters.
3. The absence of motivation. Second year medical students are focused on major courses in basic and preclinical sciences.
4. Large group teaching (n ≥ 300). All the sections of the medical Faculty are concerned.
5. Inadequate logistic support. Small sized computer rooms do not allow the organization of very many parallel hand-on sessions.
6. Insufficient teaching staffs.

Distance learning tools were used to develope online activities complementary to face to face teaching. They are focused on practice. Links to the theory are provided but only when they are indispensable. Many quizzes are also proposed in order to trigger critical mind and auto-evaluation.

By January 2005, a first cycle will be completed from the beginning of the course to the final examination. We plan to survey students from every section in order to evaluate the impact of this new teaching strategy. Their observations will be reported as well as our conclusions and suggestions for possible improvements.