Problem Based Learning for Undergraduate Students

Greetings form the famous room N101 at the Australian National University in Canberra, where Associate Professor Andis Klegeris, from University of British Columbia, is  speaking on "Generic problem-solving skills of undergraduate students: strategies for their development and monitoring". He is outlining an approach to use Problem Based Learning (PBL) for large classes of undergraduates, without needing large numbers of tutors.

Professor Klegeris points put that conventional lectures does not teach the skills looked for in graduates (typically described as "graduate attributes"). Lectures teach students to listen and take notes (hopefully), but not more active skills. He also pointed out that BPL has limitations, such as the knowledge the students learn is disorganized, evaluation is difficult and the amount of information transferred is lower.

Professor Klegeris described how he uses PBL for his biology classes of about 100 students. He uses two 90 minute lecture periods per week, with 57% made up of traditional lecture content (didactic), two problem based classes (23% of the time).

Professor Klegeris uses a conventional classroom, but up to 890% full to allow for group work. He switches from lecturing to facilitating mode during the sessions.  Students are preassigned to groups and immediately start reading the problem, working on it and discussing it in their groups, followed by hole room discussion. One interesting aspect is that there is no preparation required of the students. Also textbooks, computers and Internet access is not permitted.

This is interesting as it differs from the "flipped class" where the students watch videos and read materials to prepare for the classroom work. Professor Klegeris approach appears similar to the MIT iCampus, but without the specialized "TEAL" rooms and teaching assistants.

Also the banning of reference sources and Internet access is unusual. Presumably Professor Klegeris permits the use of devices for students who have disabilities.

One interesting point wast that Professor Klegeris allocates 5% of grade for group participation, which is peer assessed. He commented that since switching to peer assessment he has received no complaints from students.

Professor Klegeris presentation gives me the confidence to make some changes in the teaching of my own courses.

Professor Klegeris'  paper "Improvement in Generic Problem-Solving Abilities of Students by Use of Tutor-less Problem-Based Learning in a Large Classroom Setting" is available
on-line. He will be in Cairns next week for a scientific conference and is happy to repeat his presentation on PBL if a local institution can provide a venue.

Problem-solving Skills For Undergraduate Students

Associate Professor Andis Klegeris, University of British Columbia, will speak on "Generic problem-solving skills of undergraduate students: strategies for their development and monitoring" at the Australian National University in Canberra, 1pm, 21 August 2015. Professor Klegeris'  paper "Improvement in Generic Problem-Solving Abilities of Students by Use of Tutor-less Problem-Based Learning in a Large Classroom Setting" is available
on-line.

"University science graduates, after entering the job market, will be required to independently navigate through large amounts of literature looking for reliable sources of information, prioritize their tasks and hypotheses, problem solve, work effectively in a team environment, network, and evaluate job performance of their peers. Even though the above skills are valued by both students and their future employers, most standard university curricula provide very few opportunities for students to develop such skills.

A tutor-less method of conducting problem-based learning (PBL) exercises in large undergraduate classes, which was developed to model the above aspects of post-university real-world workplace experiences of students, will be described. This method has been successfully used in two biochemistry courses on our campus. Our research conducted over the last five years, shows that this mode of instruction leads to statistically significant increase in student satisfaction and engagement. Students also demonstrate statistically significant improvement in their generic problem-solving skills. Data obtained through a large-scale campus-wide study of generic problem-solving skills of undergraduate students on our campus show that majority of courses delivering subject-specific content mainly through classical didactic lecturing do not facilitate development of generic problem-solving skills.

Our preliminary data indicate that working in small groups on ill-defined problems could be one of the strategies for advancing these skills. We believe that evidence-based application of instructional techniques that benefit student problem-solving skill development should be a high priority for curricular development of universities regardless of the programs and specializations that they offer."