• Korean Medical Education Review
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.9-23
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• 2011

This study aimed to investigate the effects of tutors' domain and teaching expertise on learning outcomes in a problem based learning (PBL) environment. Four tutors and 25 first-year medical students participated in this study. Tutors' domain expertise was classified by clinical or non-clinical which is basic medicine and teaching expertise by previous tutoring experiences or not. The results showed a statistically significant difference in achievement depending on the tutors' domain expertise. Students grouped with an experienced clinical tutor attained higher achievement scores than those with an experienced non-clinical tutor, while those with an inexperienced non-clinical tutor attained higher scores than those with both inexperienced clinical tutors and experienced non-clinical tutors. Students with clinical medicine tutors also showed higher satisfaction scores than those with non-clinical medicine tutors. In particular, students grouped with an experienced clinical tutor gained higher satisfaction scores than those with inexperienced non-clinical tutors, and among the inexperienced tutors, students tutored by a clinical tutor showed higher scores than those with a non-clinical tutor. Different intervention styles were also found depending on tutors' domain and teaching expertise. Experienced tutors gradually reduced the tutoring intervention, whereas the novice provided more as the semester proceeded. Moreover, experts with a clinical medicine degree preferred direct teaching, whereas, non-clinical tutors preferred facilitating. Also, experienced tutors in the clinical medicine facilitated critical awareness than the other tutors. These results show the importance of developing a program for novice tutors to improve PBL in medical education.