Developing students' clinical reasoning skills: correlates of perceived relevance of two teaching and learning approaches

Introduction: ' Relevance' is a key concept in adult learning. Hence, this study sought to examine students' perceptions of relevance of the teaching and learning in relation to different instructional designs employed in a Comprehensive Patient Care (CPC) course that aims to develop integrated clinical reasoning skills. Methods: Third to fifth year students (2009-2011) were asked to anonymously rate the relevance of the instructional design (RELID) they participated in by means of visual analogue scales at the School of Dentistry, University of Pretoria. They were also asked to rate their perceptions of the alignment between teaching and learning and outcomes (ATLO), assessments' contribution to learning (ACL), course organisation (CO) and teacher competence (TC). RELID served as the outcome measure in stepwise linear regression analyses. ATLO, ACL, CO, TC and the instructional design ( case-based learning (CBL - 1) and the combination of discipline-based and lecture-based teaching in CPC (DB-LBT - 0)) served as the co-variables for each of the years of study. Results: The analyses showed positive correlations between RELID and ATLO and between RELID and ACL for all the years of study. RELID was associated with TC in year three and four and CO was associated with RELID in year four and five. CBL outperformed DB-LBT in terms of perceived relevance of the teaching and learning. Conclusion: The results suggest that students' perceptions of the relevance of the instructional design may be enhanced when outcomes, teaching, learning and assessment are constructively aligned during the development of clinical reasoning skills.