PBL Review part 2

Problem Based Learning Faculty Institute

The website I found is from the University of California- Irvine, and it's a faculty institute about PBL. This website explains what PBL is and that it's a student-centered approach. It then goes into the criticisms and benefits of PBL and what the instructor's role is. The instructor is not to be passive but should model different problem-solving strategies and should ask the students higher-order thinking questions. The section on this website that I really like and thought was helpful is a chart of characteristics of PBL. There are 3 columns, WHAT, HOW, and WHY? An example is WHAT: Student-centered and experimental HOW: Select authentic assignments from the discipline, preferably those that would be relevant and meaningful to student interests.  Students are also responsible for locating and evaluating various resources in the field. WHY: Relevance is one of the primary student motivators to be a more self-directed learner.
Other categories within the WHAT section are: inductive, build on/challenges prior learning, context-specific, problems are complex and ambiguous and require meta-cognitive thinking, creates cognitive conflict, and collaborative and interdependent.

The article is geared towards college professors using PBL strategies for college students. Although the context is a little more advance, the idea of PBL is the same. I did like the chart provided and thought it has good explanations of why and how to use PBL and why it works. Another reason I liked this website is that there are many examples provided with some student evaluations. I also liked that this website had some criticisms of PBL because I was interested in what they might be. As a future primary school teacher, I would try to find a different website when looking up information about PBL because this is not geared towards younger students. Although the ideas are the same, the language is more complex and the examples given do not apply to primary grade students.

http://www.pbl.uci.edu/whatispbl.html