Each tutor guided both intervention and control groups.
Groups of approximately 15 students were facilitated by 24 tutors in each year using centrally prepared lesson plans, tutor guides and student course books.
Most students also used self-organized tutorial groups, PBL tutor guides, as well as peer-led tutorial groups as part of their learning.
Formal distribution of tutor guides to students is not supported by the school; however on occasion individual tutors share the content of the guides with students with likely resultant flow-on effects through study groups.
A variety of informal learning activities utilized by students included using past student notes (85.8%) and PBL tutor guides (62.7%), and being part of self-organised study groups (62.6%), and peer-led tutorials (60.2%).
From the PCA results, two items (one item from the scale of Perception of the formal and informal curriculum and one item from Value of accessing PBL tutor guides) were excluded because of low loadings (less than 0.5).
Most students also used a range of other informal activities for learning including past student notes (85.8%), PBL tutor guides (62.7%), self-organised study groups (62.6%) and peer-led tutorials (60.2%).
Although use of PBL tutor guides and past student notes could be considered bypassing the principles of self-directed learning, the benefits to students of interacting in study groups and peer-led tutorials should be emphasized.
In a recent qualitative study [ 2], it was identified that in addition to the formal curriculum, students are using a range of resources and study strategies, such as past exam papers, past student notes, peer-led tutorials, self-organized study groups, discussions with students from previous cohorts and accessing PBL tutor guides, which could be attributed to the informal curriculum.
Tutors guide the learning process and provide orientation [ 3]; they must carefully account for the prior knowledge and the actual working hypotheses of the learners [ 33].
