Piloting an Online Narrative-Driven Case Study for Problem-Based Learning

Societal change has propelled the demand for distance education and it’s associated benefits of learning anywhere/anytime. In medical education, this growth has been stimulated by factors such as the decentralization of health-care and a decrease in opportunities for face-to-face encounters with patients that traditionally provided students "hands-on" experience. To address this need, educators are searching for effective learning platforms and pedagogical models that enable students to collaborate, study, and work at a distance. This thesis describes a pilot study that investigates the design, development, and implementation of an online problem-based learning (PBL) tutorial and the techniques used to measure the effectiveness of this model. The goal was to create a distributed PBL environment where learners could work together to resolve life-like problems and situations— a process believed to develop professional skills and critical thinking and other.