Case-based learning and multiple choice questioning methods favored by students

BACKGROUND: Investigating and understanding how students learn on their own is essential to effective teaching, but studies are rarely conducted in this context. A major aim within medical education is to foster procedural knowledge. It is known that case-based questioning exercises drive the learning process, but the way students deal with these exercises is explored little. METHODS: This study examined how medical students deal with case-based questioning by evaluating 426 case-related questions created by 79 fourth-year medical students. The subjects covered by the questions, the level of the questions (equivalent to United States Medical Licensing Examination Steps 1 and 2), and the proportion of positively and negatively formulated questions were examined, as well as the number of right and wrong answer choices, in correlation to the formulation of the question. RESULTS: The evaluated case-based questions’ level matched the United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 1 level. The students were more confident with items aiming on diagnosis, did not reject negatively formulated questions and tended to prefer handling with right content, while keeping wrong content to a minimum. CONCLUSION: These results should be taken into consideration for the formulation of case-based questioning exercises in the future and encourage the development of bedside teaching in order to foster the acquisition of associative and procedural knowledge, especially clinical reasoning and therapy-oriented thinking.