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."

Attrition and Completion in Doctoral Education: A Wicked Problem?

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where Nigel Palmer, honorary research fellow with the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne is speaking on "Attrition and Completion in Doctoral Education: A Wicked Problem?". He has been researching completion rates for doctoral candidates by international/domestic status and gender (and produced papers on education). He is looking at how to better support candidates, to improve completion times and rates completion of their degree.

Nigel argued that even if universities are full fee paying, students dropping out is still a problem. He then discussed if it was a wicked problem. He suggests it is because of the difficulty of measuring attrition as well as the management of attrition itself.

One reason for worrying about attrition is equity of access to education.  Nigel showed a graph showed the increasing number of women commencing a doctoral program over time. However, he then had a second graph showing that women were over represented in educaiton and helath, but many fewer in IT and Engineering.  One interesting trend was that in education and health participation was higher in undergraduate degrees than postgraduate ones, while it was revered in IT and engineering.

Nigel then showed a series of graphs showing international versus domestic students for the group of eight universities. Unfortunately all the colored likes look blue to me, so I could not see what the graphs were showing.

Nigel suggested that some measures to lessen attrition, such as research methods courses,  will also improve the graduate outcomes (courses for doctoral students is a hot topic at ANU at present). 

Nigel described a "crude" research doctoral degree completion rates, stupid statistic. This is calculated from the number of students completing in one year divided by the number there were the year before. This is not a very useful statistic because students normally take longer than a year to complete a degree. There have been attempts to come up with better measures, using longer periods and techniques such as a three year moving average (three years being more typical for degree completion). Unfortunately as Nigel points out such calculations are skewed by recent growth of international enrolments in Australia, which makes the relative competion rate look low.

The US PHD  Completion project found completion rates of 49% for humanities to 65% for engineering. Similar studies for ANU showed a completion rate of about 80% for full time students. Niegl's research is showing a similar high completion rate, but it is too early to report definitive results. The figures show an interesting S curve, with the rate of completions increasing rapidly for about the first five years and then tapering off. Nigel pointed out that there were a significant number of completions from five to ten years.

It is surprising how difficult it is to get an agreed measure and then actual statistics for completion rates for degrees. Universities are in the business of producing graduates (and this is a very large export industry for Australia). It would seem reasonable to have agreed measures for university output.

If there were more reliable statistics, it would be possible to consider measures to aid completion rates. But will this really have a useful effect on measures. As an example, if domestic male students complete at a lower rate than international female students, would it be appropriate to set a higher entry standard, or resources provided, on the basis of gender?

Nigel concluded that doctoral attrition was not a wicked problem and this this might engender a sense of helplessness.

I suggest some easy measures to address attrition would be to provide more flexible programs. As an example, Australian postgraduate students could be offered programs which allow for a mix of coursework and research. As is usual in North America, students would start with coursework and then, depending on their interests and aptitudes, focus on coursework or research. Also the option of the student completing a qualification lower than a doctorate, without feeling they have in some way failed, would be useful. In addition it would be useful to have accessible support services, which are available on and off campus, would be useful. Also services for monitoring supervisors in the way teachers are, would be useful.