Anyone in a PBL based program that has problems with it's administration?

[markdc]

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I'm going to Uni in Australia and they seem to be really screwing up in their administration of the PBL course and it's evaluation.

Can those of you in North American schools describe the evaluation process in your university?

(At ours we have 4 domains ethic, pub health, clinical reasoning and biological sci.)

All domains are examined in 1 exam so you get 4 separate marks for writing one test! There are only 3 written exams in the year and one practical hands on exam at the end.

The strange thing is that you can fail one domain and carry on to 2nd year but your marks in each domain carry on. So in theory if you screw up 2nd year in the same domain you would have to repeat 2 years!!!

Just wondered if anyone has similar problems cause it's driving me nutz!!!
I would like to hear about how PBL is used as a teaching method in your respective universites (ie. is it the focus of the entire course, an adjunct etc)

 

[aphistis]

I'm going to Uni in Australia and they seem to be really screwing up in their administration of the PBL course and it's evaluation.

Can those of you in North American schools describe the evaluation process in your university?

(At ours we have 4 domains ethic, pub health, clinical reasoning and biological sci.)

All domains are examined in 1 exam so you get 4 separate marks for writing one test! There are only 3 written exams in the year and one practical hands on exam at the end.

The strange thing is that you can fail one domain and carry on to 2nd year but your marks in each domain carry on. So in theory if you screw up 2nd year in the same domain you would have to repeat 2 years!!!

Just wondered if anyone has similar problems cause it's driving me nutz!!!
I would like to hear about how PBL is used as a teaching method in your respective universites (ie. is it the focus of the entire course, an adjunct etc)

PBL is an interesting and potentially worthwhile adjunctive instructional method, but at my school it's so shot through with bad administrative decisions that's it's frustrating and, at times, the next thing to useless. I can't really go into the specific problems, since I'm not exactly anonymous here, but rest assured your school isn't the only one struggling to implement PBL effectively.

 

[markdc]

It would be interesting to hear how other unis have structured their PBL course.

Unfortunately our uni is using it as the main focus of the entire course not just an adjunctive teaching method. It ends up feeling like "teach yourself med".

There has been much criticism of the course over the past few years and I kept wondering why not copy med schools in NA that would have worked through the problems? Many have had PBL in place for over 10 years.

So I want to hear how it is structured and whither or not the students believe it is superior to traditional courses.

 

[goldfish]

i find PBLs useless and a waste of time. Unfortunately attendance is required.
thankfully there are still many lectures in my school and PBL is only once a week.

 

[daisygirl]

PBL at my school was mainly done as an adjunct to lectures. I actually liked the PBL sessions since I felt that I learned more in them (obviously if I read before time though, and that didn't happen often).

One course in my school was taught EXCEPTIONALLY- GI during second year. This course was revamped such that all of the students were split up into groups of fifteen. Each group had a physican leading the group. We spent 2-3 hours per day going over the relevant chapters in the syllabus (we used the University of Washington's syllabus which was incredible). At the end of the session, we discussed how the information that we learned is medically relevant. This course was phenomenal. It was like a mini-lecture mixed with PBL. I learned so much, and I didn't have to fight through the material (which I often had to when trying to learn old-style lecture stuff). The vast majority of my class loved the structure of this class- so much so, that students were pushing the deans to implement this sort of organization into many of the second year classes.

Interestingly enough, the GI faculty at my school had to attend a two week course that taught them how to teach us . It really was a great experience. Much better than your monotone lecturer boring the neurons in your brain to sleep with the mountains of useless minutae that they happen to find so fascinating.

 

[goldfish]

one of the problems with the way PBLs are conducted in my school is the fact that the groups are not always led by a doctor so if u somehow presented by mistake a wrong bit of info or misunderstood some concept it might not be corrected.

I also find that it isn't always possible to have a proper discussion simply because you may have to research too much stuff for one session hence leading to inadequate time to properly understand and therefore efectively discuss a subject that u r encountering for the first time most likely.