EVALUATION OF PROBLEM BASED LEARNING METHOD IMPLEMENTATION

Since 2008, Nutrition Study Program in Faculty of Public Health University of Indonesia has started to implement the Problem Based Learning (PBL) as the method of learning. In order to explore the students' opinions on that kind of learning method, we were conducting evaluation study in 2010. We distributed questionnaires to all students from the 2008 class (103 students), and the response rate was 84,4% (87 questionnaires). The study was conducted in cross sectional design and analysis was done descriptively. Approximately 77% respondents enrolled into Nutrition Study Program from one university's entrance exam. After attending the first year university, 90% respondents decided to stay in this study program, while in fact 70% of them were choosing Nutrition as their second option. This PBL method would be implemented starting from the third semester (second year). This method was used in order to accustom the students with real problems in the working fields, as well as to sharpen their soft-skills (Arends, 2012). Approximately 71,3% respondents also mentioned they have known Nutrition Study Program have applied this Problem Based Learning in the third semester. After attending 1 year of study with PBL method, approximately 80% respondents stated that information or knowledge in PBL method depends on themselves, relating to how eager they gain and read literatures. Overall, 96,6% respondents mentioned that they gained benefits from PBL method implementation in study, which in details consisted of the abilities to analyze, do presentations, leadership communications, and team works (94%, 94%, 97.6%, 82.1%, 97.6% respectively). Approximately 90% respondents stated that the learning situation in Nutrition Study Program was very conducive since it was supported by the limited number of students of 10-14 students in a class (82,8%), and also because the good relationship between the lecturers and students (83,9%). Overall, the students were satisfied with PBL method implementation in Nutrition Study Program and recommended some feedbacks, which are better schedule management of lecturing (64%), adding facilities for practical works following with improving the literatures' accessibilities' and variabilities (29,3%). Based on our findings, we concluded that PBL method fits to be implemented as learning method and deserves to continually be used in Nutrition Study Program of Public Health University of Indonesia.