III. Chapter 2: What is Problem-based Learning?

a. Our success is based on our ability to cope and identify key issues, access information, and effectively work our way through situations.

b. Context-building knowledge gives form to everything we do or think or feel, on the job, in the voting booth, in the home.

c. PBL confronts students with a messy, ill-structured situation in which they assume the role of the stakeholder or “owner” of this situation.

d. They identify the real problem and learn whatever is necessary to arrive at a viable solution through investigation. Teachers use real-world problems as they coach learning through probing, questioning, and challenging student thinking.

e. Defining Problem-based Learning

i. PBL is focused, experiential learning (minds on, hands-on) organized around the investigation and resolution of messy, real-world problems.

ii. It includes 3 main characteristics:

1. Engages students as stakeholders in a problem situation.

2. Organizes curriculum around a given holistic problem, enabling student learning in relevant and connected ways.

3. Creates a learning environment in which teachers coach student thinking and guide student inquiry, facilitating deeper levels of understanding.

f. Designing and implementing a PBL unit are interrelated processes that balance the needs of students, the curriculum, and learning standards within a particular learning context.

i. Problem Design: Teachers select possibilities for problem situations by:

1. knowing their curriculum

2. being aware of learning standards

3. scanning local newspapers

4. speaking with community members and colleagues

5. Other Sources for Problematic Situations

a. Look beyond the textbook….

i. In your backyard

ii. In your neighborhood

iii. In your school

iv. In your sphere of influence

v. In your political arena.

b.

ii. Problem-based learning surrounds students with opportunities to develop proficiency in applications of learning that set them apart from other students.

iii. To develop a PBL unit, teachers decide upon the learning focus and a role to frame the students’ involvement in a chosen problem. The learning experience provides students with opportunities to take different perspectives on the subject.

iv. Several events essential for successful PBL experiences:

1. Teachers have clear goals that support student thinking at different levels.

2. Teachers anticipate embedding essential instruction and assessment at critical points during problem investigation.

g. The Flow of a PBL Learning Experience

i. Students assume the role of a stakeholder in the problem scenario

1. Students should also care about what happens in a situation. Emotion is important to the educative process because it drives attention, which drives learning and memory.

ii. Students are immersed in an ill-structured problematic situation.

1. Situations are messy, complex, and not enough information is provided.

2. Since not enough information is provided, the situation requires inquiry, information gathering and reflection.

3. Students “uncover” diverging assumptions, conflicting evidence, and varying opinions about the situation.

4. A problematic situation is changing, tentative, and has no simple or fixed solution.

iii. Students identify what they know, what they need to know, and their ideas.

1. Students clarify and share what they know at the outset of the PBL assignments.

2. The process helps them access prior knowledge and begin to make connections.

3. The ill-structured problem compels students to identify what they know and need to know to resolve the tension of a problem situation.

iv. Students define the problem to focus further investigations.

1. Once immersed in their stakeholder role and situation, students gather and share information among the other class members or their team.

2. Information collection process:

a. Coach students to come to a clear statement of what they believe to be the central issue of the problem, along with a list of several conditions that must be satisfied for a good solution.

b. Teachers post evolving problem statements in the classroom to help tighten and target the investigation.

v. Students generate several possible solutions and identify the one that fits best.

1. Students discuss an emerging picture of the real problem.

2. After developing solutions, students evaluate them in light of the problem statement’s central issue and identified conditions.

3. Once students select the best-fitting solution, they present their findings:

a. Through use of concept maps, charts, graphs, proposals, position papers, memos

b. Maps, models, videos, web page.

4. Once solution is in presentation form, they offer it to the problem’s real stakeholders, and respond to stakeholder questions and concerns.

h. Essential Elements of Problem-based Learning:

i. Problematic situation is presented first and serves as the organizing center and context for learning.

ii. Problematic situation has common characteristics:

1. ill-structured and messy

2. changes with addition of new information

3. not solved easily or with a specific formula

4. does not result in one right answer.

iii. Students are active problem solvers and learners; teachers are cognitive and metacognitive coaches. “Thinking about thinking.”

iv. Information is shared, but knowledge is a personal construction of the learner. Discussion and challenge expose and test thinking.

v. Assessment is an authentic companion to the problem and process.

vi. A PBL unit is not necessarily interdisciplinary, but is always integrative.

i. Benefits of Problem-based Learning

i. PBL increases motivation.

ii. Makes learning relevant to the real world, offering a response to an obvious question: “Why do we need to learn this information?” and “What does what I am doing in school have to do with anything in the real world?”

iii. Promotes higher-order thinking.

iv. Encourages learning how to learn.