Students Guided Learning for Medical Students - Novel Teaching for the 21st Century

The changing demands of the Western organizational and academic world are having a great impact on the medical profession. Adapting medical students' learning to as-yet-unknown future needs requires changes in learning objectives, methods, and assessment and the development of new skills. Students frequently express initial opposition to paradigms that require them to take responsibility for their learning process and invest greater effort. They may be uncooperative, and this may impede their training and the adoption of such changes in other courses. This qualitative study examines changes in attitudes toward student-centered learning among 120 medical students who experienced student-guided learning (SGL), a novel method emphasizing the student's primary role and self-expression, in a 3-unit course titled Patient-Therapist Relationship. The data were gathered from reflective journals the students kept during the course. The application of SGL methods resulted in changes in students' attitudes toward adopting new teaching methodologies. Their initial opposition was expressed in low motivation, lack of cooperation, negative attitudes toward assignments, and lack of motivation toward adopting changes. At the end of the course there was an improvement in students' openness to change, and they showed a greater desire and higher motivation to adopt new paradigms and innovative methodologies.