Journal of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences (May 2024)
Design of the portfolio Based on Problem-Based Learning for the geriatric health master\'s internship Program and its Evaluation Considering Student Satisfaction Levels
Abstract
Background and purpose: Students often express confusion and dissatisfaction with the current internship structure for their master's degree in geriatric health. They feel the lack of clear evaluation criteria and a portfolio system to track their progress. Additionally, the field is relatively new, and traditional teaching methods may not be optimal. This study aimed to design and implement a portfolio based on problem-based learning (PBL) for the geriatric health master's internship program. We also evaluated student satisfaction with this approach. Materials and methods: This semi-experimental quantitative study was conducted in 2024. The stages of conducting the research included designing, implementing, and evaluating the level of satisfaction of students from the portfolio and comparing it with the traditional method. In this way, after designing and compiling the portfolio in problem-based learning, during the implementation phase of the internship program, all the students in the internship unit in the field of elderly health, who were ten people, were randomly divided into two groups: control (five people) and test (five people) were divided and during 12 weeks they passed the training course using the traditional method (control group) and the portfolio method (test group) It was implemented and the internship scores were announced for the students of each group. In the third step, to measure the level of satisfaction of students, the two mentioned methods of a two-part questionnaire including demographic information and questions related to the level of satisfaction of students were used. After collecting the research data, they were entered into SPSS-26 software, and independent t-tests and Fisher's exact test were used to compare the level of satisfaction of the two groups due to the normality of the data. Results: The average age (standard deviation) of the control and test groups was 35.4 (8.56) and 33.6 (8.08) years, respectively. There were no significant differences between the groups in terms of age, grade point average, gender distribution, or marital status. The mean (standard deviation) of overall satisfaction scores for the control and test groups was 26.8 (8.1) and 35.8 (2.28), respectively. The independent t-test revealed a statistically significant difference in overall satisfaction between the two groups (t=2.38, p ≤ 0.05). Conclusion: This study suggests that geriatric health master's students find the PBL portfolio method more satisfying than the traditional internship approach. Students in the PBL group reported higher motivation and felt a stronger connection between theoretical knowledge and clinical practice. Therefore, incorporating the PBL portfolio method into geriatric health and other medical science internship programs is recommended. Notably, this is the first study to explore this method with geriatric health students. A limitation is the small sample size. Future research should involve a larger and more diverse student population across multiple universities.
