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Updated: Jun 18, 2026
Project-Based Learning Guidelines for Health Sciences Students: An Analysis with Data Mining and Qualitative Techniques
Published on: December 9, 2022
Themes and characteristics of medical students' self-identified clerkship learning goals: a quasi-statistical
Haruka M Torok1, Dario Torre, D Michael Elnicki
1Collaborative Inpatient Medicine Service Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, 5200 Eastern Avenue, MFL West 6F, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA. htorok1@jhmi.edu
Background:
Investigators sought to clarify the characteristics of students' self-identified learning goals.
Method:
Goals collected from two schools were categorized into content themes and as "specific" or "general" qualitatively. Associations between learner characteristics and the distributions of goals were analyzed quantitatively.
Results:
Investigators obtained 879 goals from 290 students. Clinical skills were most frequently identified (89%), followed by medical knowledge (44%), career choice (17%), and attitudinal goals (15%). Within clinical skills, 12 subcategories emerged. Improving oral presentations and critical-thinking ability were more common during the first six months (15% versus 7%, P = .05; 16% versus 8%, P = .04), whereas management skills dominated during the second half of the academic year (18% versus 31%, P = .01). Half of students (n = 146; 50%) listed only "general" goals, and the specificity did not increase over time.
Conclusions:
Students' main goal was acquiring clinical skills. Their focus within clinical skills shifted to more advanced skills but remained nonspecific.
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