Credit Hours Policy - Is It Working for Hybrid Problem-Based Learning Curriculum: An Experience of Najran School of Medicine KSA

In this article, the authors describe the practice of Najran School of Medicine of adopting an incipient credit hours policy and evaluate the impact of this change on fine-tuning quandaries of credit hours calculation for PBL courses.

The approach, we followed, was content analysis of the literature concerning what is written about credit hours of the different learning activity. We set an incipient credit hours policy where every learning activity assessed, characterized and the equipollent workload and credit were assigned. The incipient policy was applied to 11 courses of the integrated problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum of Najran medical school and a report for curriculum reform was engendered.

We found that the application of the incipient policy can avail to reduce lectures and gives chance for increase of student-centred learning activities on further curriculum revisions.

The application of this policy was effective for adjustment of the credit hours of our Hybrid PBL Curriculum for the purpose of academic accreditation. It can also give flexibility to the process of curriculum reform that is highly germane to PBL philosophy.