Publisher: Donald R. Woods

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Department of Chemical Engineering,

McMaster University,

Hamilton ON L8S 4L7

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Problem-based Learning: helping your students gain the most from PBL

© copyright 1995 Donald R. Woods

All rights reserved. Printed in Canada. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Donald R. Woods, Box 762, Waterdown, ON, L0R 2H0, Canada

Other related books

Problem-based Learning: how to gain the most from PBL (1994) ISBN 0-9698725-0-X

Problem-based Learning: resources to gain the most from PBL (1995) ISBN 0-9698725-2-6

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Canadian Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Woods, Donald R.

Problem-based learning: helping your students gain the most from PBL; instructor's guide to

Problem-based learning: how to gain the most from PBL

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-9698725-1-8

1. Group problem solving - Study and teaching (Higher).

2. Study skills - Study and teaching (Higher).

I. Title

LB2395.W662 1995 378.1'7'02812 C95-932335-X"Problem-based Learning: helping your students gain the most from PBL" 3rd edition, March 1996

Instructor's Guide for "Problem-based Learning: how to gain the most from PBL" ISBN 0-9698725-0-X

© copyright 1996, Donald R. Woods

Preface

For years I realized that I should be doing something different in the classroom. Something other than "lecturing." Yet change? Change can be very frightening... for you and for your students. This book provides some options and nitty gritty details to help you explore more effective ways of promoting student learning.

Who will gain something from this book?

Any teacher wishing to improve student learning. You may be lecturing to classes of 200. This book gives ideas about how to improve student learning. You may be using active learning now and want to consider other options. You may be using collaborative learning groups and want to see other options. You may want to move to small group, self-directed, self-assessed problem-based learning (PBL) but you are one instructor with 150 students. You may be a tutor using small group, self-directed, self-assessed PBL now and you want to know how to improve. This book is packed with practical ideas.

What will you gain?

You will have an opportunity to develop activities for teaching process skills; facilitating learning for doing versus learning for knowing by implementing a PBL course or program. The first five Chapters give an overview plus issues and options for handling the details to explore, develop, enrich and implement PBL in the classroom. The focus is on highlighting both the currently-known strengths and weaknesses of PBL and helping you maintain the strengths and overcome the weaknesses. Each Chapter provides numerous references if you want more details. Many examples are given.

Chapter 6 suggests how to combine the ideas from this book for you (the teacher) with the ideas in the companion book "How to Gain the Most from PBL", HTGTM (written for students).

Chapter 7 lists books, newsletters, e-mail, articles and videotapes that will help you.

Above all, you will gain confidence in what you are doing in the classroom.

How might you use this book?

Consult first the Annotated index and the Table of Contents to identify the issue you want to address. I have tried to give an introduction plus sufficient details to help you cope with any issue troubling or concerning you. Yet, this book is the tip-of-the-iceberg. Many resources are available on most issues. Hence, numerous references are given.

Use this book as a guide to how best use the companion student book "How to gain the most from PBL."

How does this book relate to the other books in the series?

The three books in this PBL series are:

"How to gain the most from PBL" HTGTM - written for students to give them the "big picture" of this style of learning.

"Helping your students gain the most from PBL" -written for teachers to give them the process for implementing their personal style of PBL for their environment.

"Resources to gain the most from PBL" - written for teachers and instructional development people to give the how to details for most issues that students and teachers encounter in implementing a PBL program.

The Tables of Contents of the companion books are given in the last two books.

Chapter by Chapter outline

Chapter 1 explains why PBL is such an effective approach to improving student motivation and learning and gives you about a half a dozen options for moving toward PBL. The effectiveness of PBL is described, including the apparent weaknesses. The weaknesses are highlighted so that as you develop your program, you can maintain the many advantages of PBL and overcome the weaknesses.

As you adapt approaches leading to PBL, your role shifts. You become a coach. Chapter 2 describes your role as coach if you have a small group of six students or if you are using PBL in a class of 200 students.

For some teachers, PBL is what you are legislated to do. For others, PBL is a popular trend that you want to explore. Some adapt PBL because they want to. Most hope that by putting students in groups, using a problem solving format, using self-directed learning, the students will magically obtain skill in group process, problem solving and lifetime learning skills. Rarely does this happen. You and I have the opportunity to help students to develop these skills. But, too often, this opportunity is wasted. Chapter 3 highlights the key issue for small group, self-directed PBL.. what to do with the "processing skills" needed if PBL is to work effectively. In tutored groups, we train you - the tutor - with these skills. In tutorless groups, we must train the students. Chapter 3 lists options for when and how we might develop the required processing skills.

In Chapter 4, small group, self-directed, self-assessed PBL is contrasted with conventional approaches to teaching to highlight, again, the "weaknesses" in PBL. Then the detailed, step-by-step process in setting up PBL is given. Options are explored, especially to help maintain the strengths and overcome the weaknesses of PBL.

Student assessment - Chapter 5 uses a question and answer format to help us work our way through this challenging topic.

Acknowledgements

I thank the students in my PBL courses over the past 10 years who worked with me to develop our current program and who graciously gave me permission to reprint their reports and ideas. Dale Roy, Andy Hrymak, Fred Hall, Carolyn Eyles, Wendy Duncan-Hewitt, LuisBranda, Ted Cleary, Lea Ann Hansen, Nick Popovich and Howard Barrows helped me with this book. I thank especially Dale Roy, Instructional Development, McMaster University; Ken M. Brown, Forestry, Lakehead University; Roger Hadgraft, Civil Engineering, Monash University, Australia; Cheryl Cox, Pharmacy, University of Alberta; Bev Williams, Nursing, University of Alberta; Jane and Hill Jason, University of Colorado who gave me excellent feedback for this third revision.

Don Woods

Waterdown ON iii iv v vi