Students' competencies in Problem-Based Learning influence evaluation of tutors

In Problem-Based Learning (PBL), tutors transform from traditional knowledge transmitters into learning facilitators, which renders accurate tutor evaluation essential to the effectiveness of PBL implementation. Nevertheless, it remains underexplored whether students' attitudes toward the PBL methodology exert systematic influences on tutor evaluation outcomes. To address this, a cross-sectional study conducted an online questionnaire survey among 263 medical students from Shandong University to examine the association between students' PBL attitudes and tutor evaluations, as well as the potential mediating role of perceived competency enhancement. The questionnaire collected participants' demographic information and adopted a 5-point Likert scale to assess three core variables: students' attitudes toward PBL, perceived competency enhancement, and tutor evaluation scores. Correlation analysis, hierarchical regression analysis, and structural equation modeling were employed for statistical data analysis. The results indicated that both students' PBL attitudes and perceived competency enhancement were significantly positively correlated with tutor evaluations (P < 0.01). After controlling for demographic variables, hierarchical regression analysis revealed that these two factors collectively explained 54.5% of the variance in tutor evaluations. Mediation analysis further verified that students' PBL attitudes could positively predict tutor evaluations through both direct and indirect pathways. The direct effect of PBL attitudes on tutor evaluations was 0.124, while perceived competency enhancement served as a significant partial mediator with an indirect effect of 0.390, accounting for 75.97% of the total effect. In conclusion, students' PBL attitudes influence their evaluations of tutors predominantly via the mediating pathway of perceived competency enhancement. Consistent with the hypothesized attributional framework, these findings suggest that PBL tutors should focus on fostering students' comprehensive competencies, so as to guarantee the validity of faculty evaluation and promote the iterative optimization of PBL teaching practice.