Effects of a revised preclinical curriculum on students' perceptions of their cognitive behaviors, attitudes to social issues in medicine, and the learning environment.

Background: A modular, systems-based preclinical curriculum acceptable to faculty members who had rejected problem-based learning was introduced in 1997.
Purpose: To evaluate to what extent the new curriculum is meeting some of its major goals.
Methods: We administered selected scales from 3 survey instruments to the last 2 classes in the old curriculum and the first 3 in the new curriculum. We also compared our results with those from other medical schools that had used the same scales.
Results: The new curriculum has had positive effects on students' perceptions of the learning environment (effect sizes mostly small to medium, d = .03 to .60) but less effect on their attitudes to social issues in medicine or on their preference for conceptualization versus memorization when studying (most effect sizes below small; largest d = .026). Our results are similar to those for problem-based learning curricula for the learning environment scales and to traditional curricula for the cognitive behavior scales.
Conclusions: Some of the goals for the new curriculum are being achieved almost to the levels reported for problem-based curricula.