Medical Students' Goals, Methods and Opinions on Self-directed Learning and Analysis of Self-assessment

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. Methods: The study group included 90 medical students doing their clerkship in the department of Laboratory Medicine, Mokdong Hospital, Ewha Womans University, School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea, from August 2005 to October 2006. Students were asked to review cases, formulate learning goals, implement appropriate learning strategies and present learning outcomes. Students' opinions on SDL were collected. Their self-assessments were compared with the faculty evaluation scores using the same checklist. Three groups were defined according to the faculty scores: scores >12, high; scores 10～12, middle; scores