Development of PBL Package - focusing on dental hygienist roles -

치과위생사 역할중심의 문제중심학습 패키지 개발

The purpose of this study was to introduce PBL to dental hygienist education in an effort to raise a question about the inauthentic and inappropriate curriculum. PBL is one of learning methods to enhance the problem-solving ability of learners, and it's attempted to develop a PBL package focusing on dental hygienist roles to lay the foundation for producing competent and expert dental hygienists with a good problem- solving ability. The literature concerned was reviewed from November 2002 through January 2003 to determine whether or not PBL was applicable to dental-hygienist course, and that turned out to be effective for dental hygienist education. And then a PBL package was developed to train students to be knowledgeable and have a knowhow and excellent problem-solving skills. The characteristics of the PBL package could be described as follows: First, that focused on dental hygienist roles to serve the purpose of this study to remedy the current unrealistic and improper curriculum and improve the problem-solving skills of learners. Second, time factor was taken into account. In this four-week course for two credits, there are four classes a week, and it's required to take six or eight weeks to apply the PBL package, which is expected to demotivate students. Therefore, it's planned to conduct more weekly classes to make a proper progress. Third, a wide variety of teaching aids were put to use, and learner would be encouraged to be more interactive and utilize teaching aids properly, and eventually, they could have an opportunity to better express themselves. Fourth, online real-time learner discussion would be attended by this researcher. Learners would have a discussion in real time in the Internet cafe chat room, and different discussion time would be allocated to each team. This researcher would take part in each team's discussion once or more. Fifth, learners would prepare one or more journal(s) about four-hour Internet cafe learning. They have to make it twice a week at least, and it would be a good opportunity for learners to look back on themselves and their teams, and their learning effect would be greater. Specific rules were presented to help them make a successful self-examination. Sixth, there are some spaces in the lower part of objective test sheets to have students describe why they make a particular answer choice. They would be asked to depict the reason of their prior evaluation and lecture assessment especially because their responses would be important for more successful discussion and feedback. Seventh, problem-solving approach was designed to attain learning objectives, stimulate the creative thinking of learners and help them share a more systematic discussion. That would serve as a secondhand guide not to make them digress when they discuss by using information they acquire from a scenario presented in class.