Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the goals, methods and opinions of medical students on self-directed learning(SDL) and to compare the self-assessments with faculty-evaluations.
Results: SDL was helpful in increasing confidence in students’ own learning abilities and in raising interest in the patient-doctor relationship. Some students had difficulty formulating learning goals on their own. The mean of the self-assessments was significantly higher than that of faculty mean(11.8±2.1 vs. 10.9±2.3, p=.005). Rater agreement by items was approximately 30%. There was significant interaction between raters and group. Among the ‘high’ group, 55% under-rated their scores to middle or low levels, whereas 66% of the ‘low’ group rated themselves higher to high or middle levels. Spearman's correlation coefficient between faculty’s and student's scores was r=.219(p=.038) and 4.4% of the faculty evaluations was predicted by the self-assessment scores.
Conclusion: These results suggest that SDL is an effective learning tool during clerkship. Since students' scores did not correlate with those of the faculty’s, students need to develop appropriate self-assessment skills.