• Journal of Oral Medicine and Pain
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.35-44
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• 2005

Purpose: The aim of this preliminary study was to evaluate the effect of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) curriculum on development of comprehension of basic medical knowledge and quality of semi-structured problem solving including scientific reasoning skill. This scientific reasoning contained five components including: size of simple, design of research cause-effect, construction of risk factor, analysis statistic of data, interpretation of result. Materials and Methods: Seoul National University Dental students (100) participated in this experience during two weeks, 2004. Forty eight multiple-choice questions (MCQ) concerned "Infection Control and Prevention" were asked before and after two sections of Lecture-Based Learning (LBL) and PBL (pretest-posttest control group design). A semi-structured problem in epidemiological research was asked to these students after two sections (posttest-only control group design). Data (mean and SD) were analysed using the t Test for two independent samples (p<.05), comparing PBL versus LBL. Results: Our analyse of scores show no difference between LBL and PBL in the development of comprehension of "Infection Control and Prevention". The quality problem solving (epidemiological research) was significantly different between the two groups (p=.029); specially, two components' scores of reflection on scientific reasoning cause-effect (p=.000) and interpretation of result (p=.001) were significantly better for PBL than for LBL. Conclusion: Theses results indicate that comparing LBL and PBL, PBL curriculum have not been disadvantaged in comprehension of basic knowledge, and have contributed to develop the scientific reasoning in problem solving.