Why try Problem-based Learning (PBL)?

My initial reason for experimenting with PBL in my fourth year module on the Political Economy of Japan was to increase student participation. In the first run of the module, students had been preoccupied with writing their theses and had thereby come to class insufficiently prepared and motivated. Not wanting to create a heavily pressurised atmosphere in a class that for most participants was their very last at NUS, PBL promised to offer an alternative that required students to assume greater responsibility in the learning process. As the above quotation by one of the participants in the module shows, my expectations were more than fulfilled.

Redesigning the Syllabus

The introduction of PBL required the redesign of the syllabus. Under the new syllabus, the first part consisted of two sessions and introduced the study of political economy and PBL. For the second part of the module, six separate problems were developed, each taking up a certain element of Japanese political economy. The PBL process for each problem was concentrated over one day. A moderated one-hour problem exploration session in the early morning was followed by a five-hour period of individual and group study and finally a two-hour session for presentation and discussion of solutions in the afternoon. The third part of the module focused on theoretical models. Since the PBL approach gives students the freedom to choose their own research questions, and students displayed a tendency to avoid larger theoretical issues, I decided to run this part of the class in the conventional reading-based way.

Problem Design

I generated the problems from newspaper articles. To spark off a discussion among students and to stimulate their urge to find out more, relatively short articles were selected that touched upon a certain topic, contained controversial or highly opinionated statements, or provided only incomplete information. The use of older articles introduced an added dimension since these inspired students to hypothesise about and investigate the circumstances at the time when the article was written and also how issues developed afterwards.

Some Learning Results

PBL completely fulfilled my expectations of increased student participation and motivation. Students warmed up quickly to the new approach and took over complete responsibility for problem definition, selection of research sources and presentation of solutions. I could limit my own role to that of a true facilitator by creating a suitable learning environment, encouraging participation of all group members and ensuring that participants stayed within the prescribed PBL process. Besides increasing participation, PBL proved to be advantageous in many other ways. The group of students enrolled in the module was highly heterogeneous in regard to previously acquired knowledge in the topic area. While under the conventional approach it had been very difficult to pitch the course to a level that catered to the needs of all participants, PBL allowed students to distribute tasks according to interests, learning needs and capabilities. It was often the weaker and initially less interested students who came up with unconventional questions that led to interesting research problems. Overall, participants were surprised how many research questions they were eventually able to derive from a relatively short newspaper article and over the course further developed their skills in this regard.

Another aspect where PBL proved its worth was the handling of academic texts by students. Readings used by students in the course of their research were often similar to those that would have been assigned as readings in a conventional class. Nonetheless, students tackled these readings with the purpose to answer a research question they had developed on their own and this made a significant difference. PBL offered participants the opportunity to construct their own understanding of issues instead of being provided with given solutions from the beginning or applying a given theoretical concept to a problem. Because they had to cope with a number of sources under time constraints, students also had to develop more effective methods of reading and digesting the available information.

Many of the points raised above might seem trivial and the objectives and results of PBL not much different to those of term projects assigned to students. However, while actual work on projects often remains a black box to the instructor, the introduction of PBL brought greater transparency in regard to the way students discussed in groups, tackled problems and came up with solutions. Having to work on a succession of problems (six in my case) combined with systematic peer and self-evaluations also allowed students to progressively develop their skills.

Afterthought

In introducing PBL, I was privileged in being able to experiment with a small group of experienced students. Consequently, the class was not typical for most of the classes taught in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. I still feel that PBL could be introduced into larger classes, especially if students were exposed to the approach more frequently and could thereby take over larger responsibilities in moderating discussions and evaluating their contributions.

Finally, in deciding whether and how to introduce PBL, I found the publications by Don Woods of McMaster University to be especially useful. In his separate guidebooks for students and instructors (information and downloads available at his website at http://www.chemeng.mcmaster.ca/pbl/pbl.htm), he not only provides extensive information on issues of student preparation, problem design, assessment and possible pitfalls, but also shows ways to introduce PBL gradually and partially into existing courses.