Table 8 Qualitative results of students’ opinions on the open-IBL experience regarding satisfaction, usefulness, interprofessionalsim, the tutors of the subject, evaluation, experienced emotions and limitations. Results obtained from the students’ comments (n = 175) and the focus groups (n = 32)
Category | Findings | Cites |
|---|---|---|
Satisfaction | Students were satisfied with their project and with the methodology, perceiving that IBL promotes long-term knowledge retention. | What you learn with open-IBL you retain longer. |
Usefulness | Students considered it useful for their future: how to work in a lab and do field research; also useful for final bachelor project. | It prepares you for the final bachelor project, but also for research. You are more prepared for the professional world. |
Inter-professionalism | Students considered interprofessionalism a positive experience: They learned to work cooperatively, with ideas from different fields, and consider ways of working useful for the project and future. | Multidisciplinary teams provide us with different views and help us work cooperatively with peers from other fields. |
Tutors | Different kinds of tutors participated. Students considered the ideal tutor should have previous experience, guide, and give freedom—not just evaluate. | I think that the ideal tutor is a balance between guidance and freedom and awareness of real possibilities. |
Evaluation | Students appreciated the assessment and expert committee assessing the projects. However, they saw some limitations, such as the bias of the experts assessing interdisciplinary projects. | The formative assessment was useful to keep up to date, but the committee assessed the projects depending on the field. |
Emotions | Positive: motivating, interesting, involvement, competition, creativity. | You can choose the topic, so we look for an interesting project that motivated and engaged us. We had lot of work. It put pressure on me. |
Negative: confusion and difficulties during the process, anxiety for amount of work. | ||
Limitations | Organizational issues, timing of the subject, tutors and evaluation | Ten weeks is not enough time to carry out the project. It was difficult to meet the deadline. |