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INTRO-PBL-B.TAGHAVI-NOVEMBER2018-JOURNALCLUB
SOMETHING PERSONAL…
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What ARE the
treatments?
What is
psoriasis?
AFTER A WHILE…
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WHAT WAS IT?
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PROBLEM BASED LEARNING
• Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching method in which complex real-
world problems are used as the vehicle to promote student learning of
concepts and principles as opposed to direct presentation of facts and
concepts.
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• When teachers and schools skip the problem-formulating stage—handing facts and
procedures to students without giving them a chance to develop their own questions and
investigate by themselves—students may memorize material but will not fully understand or
be able to use it. Problem-based learning (PBL) provides a structure for discovery that helps
students internalize learning and leads to greater comprehension.
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SIMPLY PUT: TO BE A PARROT OR NOT TO BE
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ORIGIN
• The roots of problem-based learning can
be traced to the progressive movement,
especially to John Dewey's belief that
teachers should teach by appealing to
students' natural instincts to investigate
and create.
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“We only think when we are confronted with problems.”
–john Dewey
ORIGIN
• The American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in
education and social reform, wrote: “Methods which are permanently successful in formal education . . .
go back to the type of situation which causes reflection out of school in ordinary life. They give pupils
something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking, or the
intentional noting of connections; learning naturally results”
• Educators who use problem-based learning recognize that in the world outside of school, adults build
their knowledge and skills as they solve a real problem or answer an important question—not through
abstract exercises. In fact, PBL originally was developed for adults, to train doctors in how to approach
and solve medical problems.
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HOW TO USE PBL?(FOR EDUCATORS)
• Any subject area can be adapted to PBL with a little creativity. While the core problems will vary among
disciplines, there are some characteristics of good PBL problems that transcend fields :
• The problem must motivate students to seek out a deeper understanding of concepts.
• The problem should require students to make reasoned decisions and to defend them.
• The problem should incorporate the content objectives in such a way as to connect it to previous
courses/knowledge.
• If used for a group project, the problem needs a level of complexity to ensure that the students must work
together to solve it.
• If used for a multistage project, the initial steps of the problem should be open-ended and engaging to draw
students into the problem.
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HOW TO USE PBL (FOR STUDENTS):
• With PBL, your teacher presents you with a problem, not lectures or
assignments or exercises. Since you are not handed "content", your learning
becomes active in the sense that you discover and work with content that you
determine to be necessary to solve the problem.
• In PBL, your teacher acts as facilitator and mentor,
rather than a source of "solutions."
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• 1. Explore the issues:
Your teacher introduces an "ill-structured" problem to you.
Discuss the problem statement and list its significant parts.
You may feel that you don't know enough to solve the problem but that is the challenge!
You will have to gather information and learn new concepts, principles, or skills as you engage in the problem-solving process.
• 2. List "What do we know?"
What do you know to solve the problem?
This includes both what you actually know and what strengths and capabilities each team member has.
Consider or note everyone's input, no matter how strange it may appear: it could hold a possibility!
• 3. Develop, and write out, the problem statement in your own words:
A problem statement should come from your/the group's analysis of what you know, and what you will need to know to solve
it. You will need:
• a written statement
• the agreement of your group on the statement
• feedback on this statement from your instructor.
(This may be optional, but is a good idea)
• Note: The problem statement is often revisited and edited as new information is discovered, or "old" information is discarded.
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• 4. List out possible solutions
List them all, then order them from strongest to weakest
Choose the best one, or most likely to succeed
• 5. List actions to be taken with a timeline
• What do we have to know and do to solve the problem?
• How do we rank these possibilities?
• How do these relate to our list of solutions?
Do we agree?
• 6. List "What do we need to know?"
Research the knowledge and data that will support your solution
You will need to information to fill in missing gaps.
• Discuss possible resources
Experts, books, web sites, etc.
• Assign and schedule research tasks, especially deadlines
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• 7. Write up your solution with its supporting documentation, and submit it.
You may need to present your findings and/or recommendations to a group or your
classmates.
• This should include the problem statement, questions, data gathered, analysis of data, and
support for solutions or recommendations based on the data analysis: in short, the process and
outcome.
• 8. Review your performance
This debriefing exercise applies both to individuals and the group.
Take pride in what you have done well; learn from what you have not done well. Thomas
Edison took pride in unsuccessful experiments as part of his journey to successful outcomes!
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PBL IN MEDICINE
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“That which is used - develops. That
which is not used wastes away.”
― Hippocrates
• Traditionally, medical schools taught doctors by
requiring them to memorize a great deal of
information and then to apply the information in
clinical situations. This straightforward approach did
not fully prepare doctors for the real world where
some patients might not be able to identify their
symptoms or others might show multiple symptoms.
Though students memorized basic medical information
for tests in their courses, they did not know how to
apply the information to real-life situations and so
quickly forgot it.
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• Howard Barrows, the American physician and medical educator
who was Professor Emeritus at the Southern Illinois University School
of Medicine, argued that the teaching of medicine should be
organized in a way that emulates the reasoning of a skilled
practitioner. Rather than presenting information to students in a
decontextualized, discipline-based way, Barrows proposed that
students should be allowed to engage new information in the
context of solving authentic clinical problems. In the course of
exploring a problem, students in a PBL curriculum identify
deficiencies in their understanding and identify their own resources
for redressing these deficiencies.
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• While most medical schools focused on providing
knowledge, Barrows thought this was just the first of three
interdependent elements:
• (1) an essential body of knowledge, (2) the ability to use
knowledge effectively in the evaluation and care of
patients' health problems, and (3) the ability to extend or
improve that knowledge and to provide appropriate care
for future problems which they must face
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learning medicine
knowledge
ability to use it
ability to extend
and improve it
• Medical schools generally agreed on the content that should be taught; how this material should be learned remained an
issue. Barrows developed problem-based learning to
• allow [medical] students to integrate, use, and reuse newly learned information in the context of patients' problems; the
symptoms, signs, laboratory data, course of illness, etc., provide cues for retrieval in the clinical context (Barrows 1985, p. 5).
• This led to his first educational objective for PBL:
• The medical students we educate must acquire basic science knowledge that is better retained, retrieved, and later used in
the clinical context
• Barrows designed a series of problems that went beyond conventional case studies. He didn't give students all the information
but required them to research a situation, develop appropriate questions, and produce their own plan to solve the problem.
This cultivated students' “clinical reasoning process” as well as their understanding of the tools at their disposal. He found that
PBL also developed students' abilities to extend and improve their knowledge to keep up in the ever-expanding field of
medicine and to learn how to provide care for new illnesses they encountered. Students who were taught through PBL became
“self-directed learners” with the desire to know and learn, the ability to formulate their needs as learners, and the ability to
select and use the best available resources to satisfy these needs. Barrows and Tamblyn defined this new method, problem-
based learning, as “the learning that results from the process of working toward the understanding or resolution of a
problem”
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PBL IN MEDICAL SCHOOLS
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In 1969, the medical school at McMaster University introduced the unique, hands-on approach to learning
medicine: Problem-based Learning. Problem-based Learning is quite different from “problem solving”, and
the goal of the learning is not to solve the problem which has been presented. Rather, the problem is used to
help students identify their own learning needs as they attempt to understand the problem, to pull together,
synthesize and apply information to the problem, and to begin to work effectively to learn from group
members as well as tutors.
WHY PBL?
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Fosters student-centred learning
Upholds lifelong learning
Prominence on comprehension not facts
In-depth learning and constructivist approach
Augments self-learning
Better understanding and adeptness
Reinforces interpersonal skills and teamwork
Self-motivated attitude
Enriches the teacher-student relationship
Higher level of learning
THANKS FOR LISTENING
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