Revitalising PBL groups: evaluating PBL with study teams

In problem-based learning (PBL), students are actively engaged with psychological learning principles as activation of prior knowledge, elaboration and organization of knowledge. In their tutorial groups, however, students do not always apply these principles when working with a procedure like the "Seven-Jump" method. To stimulate students to use these principles more often, they were offered another format within a PBL context: PBL with study teams. During the period of self-study, students work on a regular basis in so-called study teams, small groups of 3-4 persons. In these groups they explain to each other their learning outcomes, clarify for each other their problems while studying texts and organize their knowledge to present this to the members of other study teams in their tutorial group. Previous research showed that students spent more time on self-study in a PBL with study team condition than in a traditional PBL context. In this study the achievement as well as appreciation of students participating in a PBL with study teams' environment, is compared with students working in a traditional PBL environmen