I love PBL more than I love my own life

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
TexasTriathlete

TexasTriathlete

HTFU
10+ Year Member
15+ Year Member
Joined
Aug 19, 2007
Messages
6,211
Reaction score
30
PBL is the best curriculum ever.

I am going to take a look at some other places, because I would be dumb not to, but if I get into LECOM-B, they are going to be tough to beat.
Members don't see this ad.
 
What is so great about PBL? I mean it seems to me it is maybe even more work than lecture based, its just that you don't have to sit through lectures. Well I guess it all depends on the person, I just don't see why it is so great.
 
It promotes critical thinking and teamwork in a way that I don't think lecture can.

Basically, med school is self-directed anyway. You have so much to learn, and they won't cover even a fraction of it in lectures. With PBL, you don't have the lectures, but there is a very active discussion of the subjects.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
That's interesting you are so sold on it; I guess the PBL thing really polarizes people, leaving some singing it's praise and some the opposite. I've heard more than a few people complain that PBL is the worst and most inefficient way to learn, because if you get crappy group members, you're screwed. Diferent strokes for different folks.
 
Your going to have to experience it before you start loving it so much.
 
yeah I see your point. I guess alot of kids don't even go to lectures and just study all day alone in the library. It definitly fosters problem solving and critical thinking but may lack in board preparation. It also depends on who you get in your group. If your in a group where you hate one person, it obviously will detract from your learning. But if your in a good group it would make things more fun and exciting. I guess that it might be really good for a self-motivated person at a school like NYCOM that has mandatory attendence. Ultimately I think it does produce better doctors but may not prepare you well for the all-important tests.
 
I can make my group members not be crappy, by imposing my PBL love on them. Who the hell would go to an all-pbl school unless they are pretty well sold on PBL? Unless that's the only place they got in, but that will probably pretty few people.
 
The idea that it may lack in board prep is questionable, because every school that does PBL tends to have great results on the boards. The only PBL school in TX is UTMB-Galveston. They play about 4th-fiddle (at best) to UT-southwestern, baylor, and UT-houston (in terms of reputation), but their students have the best board scores in the state.
 
Meatwad said:
That's interesting you are so sold on it; I guess the PBL thing really polarizes people, leaving some singing it's praise and some the opposite. I've heard more than a few people complain that PBL is the worst and most inefficient way to learn, because if you get crappy group members, you're screwed. Diferent strokes for different folks.
Click to expand...



I've heard the same thing. My one friend at Drexel swears by it, but another friend of mine is really against it because of said crappy students.
 
Drexel is where I really started to warm to the idea when I interviewed there.
 
TexasTriathlete said:
The idea that it may lack in board prep is questionable, because every school that does PBL tends to have great results on the boards. The only PBL school in TX is UTMB-Galveston. They play about 4th-fiddle (at best) to UT-southwestern, baylor, and UT-houston (in terms of reputation), but their students have the best board scores in the state.
Click to expand...

UT southwestern has the best boards scores in the state followed by Baylor, but i heard UTMB is a close 3rd.
 
Meatwad said:
That's interesting you are so sold on it; I guess the PBL thing really polarizes people, leaving some singing it's praise and some the opposite. I've heard more than a few people complain that PBL is the worst and most inefficient way to learn, because if you get crappy group members, you're screwed. Diferent strokes for different folks.
Click to expand...

Man, I saw you go to Princeton's Med School....so do I!
 
It is interesting how it polarizes people. I'm just a 1st at an all PBL school so I'm just now getting into the thick of it but I think it will really be good.

It is going to be a LOT of work though, but I'll learn a lot as I'm going to have to actually read through and integrate concepts straight from all the major medical texts and not just rely on learning lectures for tests. I did enough of that in undergrad, I just didn't enjoy it.

And if PBL is done "correctly" then very little learning actually occurs during the PBL session, so have a bad group member or two isn't going to hamper you're learning per se, it may make the sessions annoying but the learning is done on your own reading the chapters. Plus it keeps things interesting, there are really no 1st or 2nd year topics, so we just finished a case that dealt with a mother on anti seizure drugs who just had a baby with a neural tube defect.....so for this case we decided we wanted to study the development of the CNS, the pharm of the drug she was on and the mechanism of how it could cause this defect (biochem), in addition to the tests we had to perform that lead to this diagnosis and why each test showed what it did. So it's nice not being overloaded at once with a single subject, but being able to put it in this sort of context, and I get a lot of reading about the same thing in multiple sources.

So we'll see, it's definitely not the end-all-be-all of learning methods and it has it's advantages and disadvantages for different people, it's not like I'm an all out fan boy, but sometimes I just don't understand the ones who outright bash it as being the worst possible thing ever, either because they don't have experience with it, or their school tries to integrate a little bit of it into the curriculum but does it in such a way that it's really just a waste of time.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
man, when i read this thread title, i thought op was contemplating suicide! :laugh:

seriously though, i'm glad a lot of people like pbl.
 
If PBL were so great I would just buy all the books and study in a circle with stuffed animals. I need the lecture.
 
My theory on PBL hatred is that PBL introduces a lot of variables. Your group members might be insanely annoying, and it's a huge change from lecture format to not have the option to avoid slackers/ incessant-yakkers/ rat-holers/ wrapper-wrinklers/ ******s.

Another variable is whether your PBL sessions are going to sufficiently cover board subjects - if a topic is not on the boards, I know a lot of students who don't want to have to think about it, ever.

I also think that the social economics of it is a variable: there's no way to know whether time spent to help the group is going to help you personally, or if you can trust anybody else to be helpful to you.

I also suspect that I'd be deeply annoying in one of these groups, because I'd be consistently participating and having a good time, cracking jokes, making observations, citing more data than was required for background reading, etc. Plus I like being in charge and getting things done and thus I would be extremely unpopular. I'd want to have as close to a productive real-life adult conversation about the topic as possible (like the way work gets done in committee in the real world - lots of people hate that, for sure). PBL haters would consider me an oxygen thief. So I'm not specifically pursuing PBL schools BECAUSE I'd LIKE it. My classmates would hate me, and I'd be enjoying it too much to be sufficiently worried about boards. Poor outcome.
 
The biggest thing about PBL is that not everyone is cut out for it. You have to be able to do a lot of self study and have to be self-motivated. However, part of learning about medicne is how to deal with difficult people and you will have to deal with them in real life. You may reallly want to treat a patient in one way but your colleagues have another plan or you have an asshat attending who won't listen to you. It's good practice.

A lot of critics want to say that you won't learn enough for the boards, but the boaqrd scores point that out as wrong. You will not only know enough to pass (and excel) on step one, but you'll also be ahead of the game when it comes to your third year because you've also spent a whole lot of time on clinical stuff. You know what tests to order and how to read them. You know what the normal values are. But you also have learned that everything isn't so neatly compartmentalized like Mosby's book of diagnostic tests seems to make you think.

Ideally, PBL could be facilitated by a monkey because the group is yours. The facilitator is there to guide you when you get off track. In actual practice, some facilitators have a lot more imput. In my first year I had a Biochemist who's currently doing research into anti cancer drugs, a DVM with a PhD in Physiology who performed a bunch of those experiments you read about in Guyton's when he was at Ohio State, a practicing PT with a PhD in Anatomy, and a neuroanatomist from Ohio State who did some incredible research on the brain. They stressed a lot of the basic science issues. The tendency at first is to try to solve the case, but that's not the point at all. In the second year, as things get more clinical, my facilitators have been DOs and MDs who tend to give you a different spin on things. You start getting patients who have multiple problems and it gets tougher. You're expecting to find lab values that show anemia of chronic disease but they actually point to anemia from blood loss. What gives? The human body just has so many variables that you can't expect things to fall always within the parameters.

Anyway, this is getting too long, but the proof is in the board scores. It works if you do it right. Part of the process of doing it right is selecting the right students to do it. That's why new prospects are sitting in on it this year, to make sure that it is for them. There will always be skeptics, but don't knock it until you've seen it in action.
 
I also loved the PBL session that I sat in on when I interviewed.

When I took O-Chem, my professor was actually doing research on the use of PBL for teaching o-chem. We did PBL for both semesters of O-chem and I loved it. Her results, from data gathered over 3 years, showed that students' test scores on the American Chemical Society O-chem test were much higher for the students that were instructed with PBL than those who were taught using the traditional lecture method.

Also, the results showed that the students who learned with PBL had better retention of knowledge over time.

I have heard that other studies have shown similar data, although I haven't yet had time to go look that up for myself. Personally, having experienced PBL, I really like it, and I know that I can learn well using it.

It obviously works, as shown by LECOM-B's board scores from last year.
 
I'd say its definately a personal preference--- and I personally couldnt handle an "unguided"(for lack of a better term) self-motivated approach. I just don't think I would be self motivated enough to trudge through the material w/o a lecture to support me =)
 
I think PBL is good because it gives you a lot of time to study on your own, which at the end of the day, is what you really need in medical school. A lot of people feel that they shouldn't have "to pay money to teach themselves", but most of the basic science stuff it learned on your own anyway. The down side is that there are times when a certain topic contains a lot of extraneous information and its helpful to have a lecture to guide you through the material. Last year I was trying to decide between LECOM-Br and SOMA. I ended up going with SOMA, because I thought they would have a PBL-type curriculum, but I regret my decision now b/c the curriculum turned out to be lecture-based. Moral of the story, choose your medical school carefully!
 
PBL is great. I did it and can't imagine doing medical school any other way. If you can't handle being a little frustrated by people at times though PBL is not for you. Group dynamics can make or break your experience. In the end I feel as though PBL did a great job preparing me for my boards and for my clinical years.
 
Lokhtar said:
Panda Bear on PBL
Click to expand...

I like his blog, that was one of the very few things he's said that i disagree with.

Again, I think his experience with it has been bad, obviously. Plus, the argument that it wastes time since you have to attend the small group session is ridiculous, I only have it for 2hrs 3x a week (6hrs total a week), and the rest of the week (except for a weekly clinical and OMM class) is my own study time.
If I can't make it for 2hrs every other day I've got time management problems.

Plus, the point of the session isn't to teach each other or to learn. It's to identify the sections of the basic sciences (path, pharm, biochem, anatomy, etc...) that we don't know yet that are important for the case, then go home and read/study them, and then at the next session we may spend a little time
talking about what learned and apply what we learned to the case, and maybe point out something to someone that different people missed, and then we move on, identify more stuff that we don't know, and then go home and study.....lather, rinse, repeat.....

There are times though that I do really miss having an outline or lecture. But even so there are lots of lectures available elsewhere that we're download and look at if we really need some guidance in a particular topic. But I think we're quickly getting to the point where we don't need an outline, mainly b/c we're getting better at identifying the basic sciences involved in a problem, and then where to go to find the answer.
 
ditto to Panda Bear. Were we producing bad doctors before developing PBL? We did a significant amount of PBL in PT school and Panda Bear's description seems about right. It may be an effective way to teach, but for some folks (like me) abhor studying in a group setting and get very little out of the PBL process.

Some folks find the process invigorating. Usually these are people who either have no exposure to PBL, or are being paid to develop PBL curricula. It just doesn't fit everyone's learning style. Again my question: was our training so inadequate previously that we had to develop PBL? The answer may be 'yes', and I'll sink back into my corner. But based on my experiences, it just didn't seem superior to other forms of learning.

My 2 drachma
 
PBL is good and golden until you get group members that try to show off and go home every day and try to "solve the problem". That's not how it's supposed to work. It's hard to admit, but there are a lot of people in med school who like to hear themselves talk and take every chance they get to say a big word about some disease they heard about once while they worked as a assistant nurse's assistant. It's fun for awhile, but once it starts to piss you off just that once, you can't go back to "PBL loveland".

Then again class sucks too, so I think LECOM's independent learning pathway sounds sweet to me.

Watch this is you like or hate PBL; you'll get a kick outta it.
(BTW, these stereotypes are often very true)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un4ULrgVYMY
 
Lokhtar said:
Panda Bear on PBL
Click to expand...

While it's interesting to hear someone else's perspective. Panda's observations are far from what really happens in a session. PBL is not group study. You really don't learn all that much during the session, although often someone will explain something in a way that leads you to one of those "ah hah" moments and you can finally say, "I get it!".

We meet for two hours three days a week and determine the basic science issues we need to learn about to understand the current case. Unlike lectures where students study the powerpoints and the streamed lectures, we read the books-- cover to cover-- more than once. Doing it right takes a little experience. The first session can be a little like Panda desribed, but unlike that situation, the facilitator doesn't teach you much as first except where to go to find the answers you need. W only have PBL once a week during the first 10 weeks when Anatomy is going on. All you really learn during that period is how to do it right.

Unlike Panda's scenario where the alpha students quickly take over, the facilitator is charged with making sure that everyone participates. 20% of your grade comes from the facilitator. As a group member you are responsible for involving everyone in the group as well. If you don't involve the group, instead dominating the topics, your grade will suffer.

One other strength of PBL is that you cover the material several times during your two basic science years. What happens in a traditional curriculum when you study Physiology for one year then don't pick it up again until it's time to study for the boards? Do you really retain that material or did you just learn enough to get by for the test during first year? OTOH, in PBL I'm still reading Histo, Embryo, Anatomy, Physiology, for example all over again in the second year. It's the repetition that helps you understand things. You learn some facts the first time through, but the second, third and fourth times through a topic you start picking up so many of the "little" things that you glossed over the first time.

It's similar to systems based learning in that we tend to have "blocks"of cases sometimes. But instead of covering it once, you'll go through the anatomy, histo, embryo, physio, pharmacology, pathology, immunology, of the heart several times in two years. You'll revisit it a number of times until you really gain an understanding. But you'll also see patients with several different problems, so you'll get a good pictures of how the different systems interact with each other as well.

Fortunately, we switch group members and facilitators at regular intervals so you get to see a mix of things and work with different people. Some of them you may not like as much as others, but this is just like the real world where you are forced to work along side people you dislike.

The bottom line is I like it, but you may not. Whatever works for you is what you should pick. At least there are options available for us these days.
 
scpod said:
It's called progress.
Click to expand...


It's not called progress. You are calling it progress and that's your opinion. What you may call "progress" is another persons "unnecessary modification to an unbroken system". I think progress might be better defined by the depth and breadth of the curriculum, not the manner in which it was delivered.

If it was broken, by all means, fix it. Were planes dropping out of the sky? You'll notice their haven't been too many fundamental changes to the jet engine since it's inception, so I'm not certain about that particular analogy. :D You'll notice numerous refinements, but PBL is more akin to placing the cockpit in the rear of the aircraft vs improving technology.

Again, I think it's a matter of preferences. I understand some students do very well in this environment. Not to sound cocky, but the manner in which the curriculum is delivered won't have an impact on my performance in med school. If it's PBL, I'll suck it up and do well regardless. It's just good to get a glimpse from all sides.

I've been teaching undergraduate courses for about ten years in a clinical and academic setting. I have seen the overall quality of student and study habits steadily declining. Maybe this makes the case for more PBL, OR maybe it makes the case for less pandering and a return to lecture based curriculum. Fortunately, that's for the education folks to sort out. Meanwhile all we will have on the matter are semi-informed opinions.
 
PT2MD said:
... maybe it makes the case for less pandering and a return to lecture based curriculum....
Click to expand...

Yes, it's just my opinion. Yet, I believe that students who get lectures memorize points from a lecture only as long as they need them. There is little need to develop outside supplemental sources because the testmaker has already given you what they consider to be important.

PBL allows you to use your mind more and to seek out other sources of material where you might potentially gain a better understanding. Sure, you can do that if you have lectures, but few people really do.

What really goes on during most lectures these days? Nobody pays attention. They are surfing the net or studying for another class or IM'ing friends from undergrad, or ordering flowers for their wedding. They aren't "learning." You said that the quality of students and study habits is declining. Maybe it's just the opposite of what you were thinking-- that the lecture system IS broken. And, we need to find new and innovative ways to teach today's kids. Just because people still pass the boards on a regular basis doesn't mean the lecture system works. Most people don't even go to their lectures anymore. The only time they really do, for the most part, is when they are required to attend. How can you say that that is not broken?
 
not to get off topic but

Who gives a f*ck about Step 2?
Click to expand...

Step II really doesnt matter much? It is all about step I?
 
TexasTriathlete said:
PBL is the best curriculum ever.

I am going to take a look at some other places, because I would be dumb not to, but if I get into LECOM-B, they are going to be tough to beat.
Click to expand...

my thoughts exactly
 
I think the best curriculum is one that integrates both lecture and pbl.
 
Playmakur42 said:
I'm still undecided on PBL (and LECOM-Brad. in particular).

I love how you can use your time as you see fit (i.e. spending more time on personally more difficult concepts.). I love the involvement a mock patient creates and the critical thinking required. I love the clinical context and repetition/overlap of info, and think that plays a major part on the board score success and possibly preparation for OMS-3 & 4 years.

I'm concerned that learning the info in bits and pieces rather than an organized fashion may be inefficient. I'm concerned that I may not study/learn the topics in enough depth (lecture often gives you bullet points of whats important). I'm concerned I'll spend too much time learning concepts that don't need to be memorized/mastered. I'm concerned that some topics may be better presented by a skilled lecturer.

In regards to LECOM-Brad., I really liked the great location, cost, pbl system, and facilities. The only drawbacks are that they don't have any residency programs and their relationship w/ hospitals accepting students for rotations are still in their infancy.

Does anyone know if Lecom-Brad. allows students to do rotations at the hospital in Ft. Myers?
Click to expand...

There are couple 2nd years on here that may have better info but as far as I know I'm not sure if there's a hospital in Ft. Myers where we do any core rotations at, BUT keep in mind that you can do your elective rotations anywhere you want. So if there's a residency program in Ft. Myers that you're interested in then you'd want to do an elective or two there so you can "show your face". That's going to be true pretty much anywhere you go. It is a new school but they are developing some good relationships with several of the local area hospitals and some of the larger ones up in Tampa/St. Pete area, which is only like 45-50 minutes away. I definitely kept in mind that it was a newer school when I was applying, but I'm really not concerned about the rotations or the fact that there isn't an official residency program associated with the school. I was at first looking to go to my local state MD school (FSU) and there's even less in that area. There are only two relatively small hospitals (TMH is the main one, decent size I guess) in Tallahassee, neither are teaching hospitals per-se, and the only residency program in that town is a family practice one. And there are no large cities around there, so your 3rd and 4th years will probably be spent somewhere else in Florida.

Was at an EM conference at a local hospital here in the county and they were talking about trying to start some residency programs there in the next few years, so that'll be right in town.

Back to PBL so we're on topic :) I also sort of shared your concerns, and it really depends on you taking the initiative to do the reading and keep on top of the work. I personally like lectures as well, but I don't learn from them. I need to see the "big picture", I can't just memorize bullet points. I need to read more about the context of topic and how it's relevant to what we saw in the case. Just tonight I was studying biochem of folate and B12 and I had 3 books open in front of me, biochem, physio, and pathology. So I read about the role of folate and B12 in each of them and feel like I have much better understanding of it and will retain it much better than if I just had a powerpoint listing the facts.

I mean, there's nothing stopping someone in a lecture based program from during the exact same thing. I just didn't want to sit through several hours of lectures a day, plus I'm getting this all in a "clinical" context and can play doctor a little, which definitely keeps me interested.

The sessions also keep you accountable with keeping up with your reading. I'm a procrastinator so if I was doing a lecture or strictly independent learning pathway I'd put things off until right before a test/quiz. Here, during a session we'll make a list of topics and/or chapters that we each need to ready/understand for the next session before we move on. So I know that in two days I better have read this stuff so I can contribute to the group and not look like in idiot and not be lost. For me that helps keep me accountable and up to speed. So when it comes time for the test, you've already read everything that's going to be on the test and then just need to go back and review.
 
Yeah, the whole PBL thing is just too variable for me to drop 30k+ per year on. That's why I declined the LECOM-B interview. PBL could be great but for me my past experience tells me that I do all the work in groups because there are alot of slackers plus having to work out meeting times that will be suitable for everyone is no walk in the park. To me, more people involved in your learning process can often create much more problems and commitments than a traditional lecture setting. Lecture and independent study work which is why 99% is the medical schools in the country use it.... I'll stick to the proven formula!
 
I'm still surprised at the extreme views, especially if you haven't really been exposed to it in it's proper form.

I think you're still missing out on some the point of the group. You're not doing the actually studying and stuff "in group" so there's really no way that one person is going to have to carry the load of the group. I was the person in undergrad that somehow got stuck with doing most of the work whenever we did group projects, but this isn't a group project.

Plus, it's med school and, for the most part, everyone is fairly bright and able to handle their own.... kind of self-selecting group. That's one advantage, everyone has a different background. We've got an organic chem PhD in our group and he's obviously going to have an easier time with our biochem stuff, while I may be able to help him with psychological health issues, but that happens on our own if we decide to study together.

And the groups are scheduled, it's not like we have to go back and forth to schedule our own time to meet together. We have, and some groups do meet together outside of the session/class time, but only if we want to go over or discuss something in more detail.

In the end it's all up to the student to learn the huge amount of material, in whatever way works. I just found this way to seem more natural and keeps me interested....which will mean that I, personally, will learn more and better.

It's just funny to me to hear people outright say it's horrible, usually just from anecdotal evidence when more and more higher education programs are integrating it into their curriculum.
 
I wouldn't touch an all-PBL school with a 40 foot pole.
Click to expand...
The resident speaks. Gotta say that gut shot has more credibility then any of us almost med students.

I am happy to be going to a school where most of the students I have talked to get A LOT out of lecture (VCOM). Being mandatory for some reason makes me think it is going to be helpful...
 
sexyman said:
The resident speaks. Gotta say that gut shot has more credibility then any of us almost med students.

I am happy to be going to a school where most of the students I have talked to get A LOT out of lecture (VCOM). Being mandatory for some reason makes me think it is going to be helpful...
Click to expand...

Well so far there are only two of us commenting here that are actually in a PBL curriculum and thus can compare it to other styles....
 
Gut Shot said:
...I do have three close acquaintances who did PBL at UTMB, and they all hated it to varying degrees.....
Click to expand...

The only real problems with PBL occur when you have the "wrong" people involved in it-- either on the facilitator side or student side. One of the reasons why it is so successful at my school is because the selection process now weeds out people who either don't like it or would suck at it. It's not for everybody, but for some people is is incredibly effective. It has been refined over time into an effective way to learn the material for many people. If, however, you have the need to be spoonfed, then it's not for you.

Fortunately, we now have the ability to choose ways which will help us learn individually. For me, and for many other people, lecture is a waste of our time. People are learning IN SPITE OF lecture, not BECAUSE of it. It's the traditional way, but that doesn't mean that it's more effective. The truth is that people who attend lecture are still doing most of their learning on their own. So are PBL students. We just spend less time at school, so we have more time to research our topics in depth. We are each responsible for learning the material in one way or another.
 
Here's one study that found PBL to be better than lecture...want some more?

http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/ijpbl/vol1/iss2/5/

There are alot of them out there. The data of many, many studies has shown PBL to be a better instructional method than traditional methods. Go look it up for yourselves, instead of just running your mouths. Is it for everyone? No. But, as studies have shown, on the whole, PBL does a VERY good job of teaching the material.
 
Regarding the article you cited:

The Effectiveness of Problem-Based Instruction: A Comparative Study of Instructional Methods and Student Characteristics
John R. Mergendoller
Nan L. Maxwell
Yolanda Bellisimo


This study compared the effectiveness of problem-based learning (PBL) and traditional instructional approaches in developing high-school students' macroeconomics knowledge and examined whether PBL was differentially effective with students demonstrating different levels of four aptitudes: verbal ability, interest in economics, preference for group work, and problem-solving efficacy. Over all, PBL was found to be a more effective instructional approach for teaching macroeconomics than traditional lecture–discussion (p = .05). Additional analyses provided evidence that PBL was more effective than traditional instruction with students of average verbal ability and below, students who were more interested in learning economics, and students who were most and least confident in their ability to solve problems.

----
Um...yeah I have plenty of questions....
 
Gut Shot said:
Precisely. So, on average, who's better off? The person with a syllabus and non-mandatory lectures, or the person with mandatory low yield group sessions?
Click to expand...

IMO, the PBL guy or gal, if you compare them to schools with mandatory lectures, because they don't have to sit through four or more useless hours of lecture per day for one. A whole bunch of schools still have a mandatory attendance policy. PBL kids can always use that time for studying.

They are also better off than the lecture students because they learn more than just what's in the syllabus. Their syllabus is the table of contents for all their required books. They read them all cover to cover several times and seek out other supplemental texts as well. There is a big crutch with the lecture kids called lecture slides. Too many of them rely on that as the total base for their learning. Without that crutch you are able to expand your learning on your own.

A lot of your argument seems to be based on the assumption that PBL sessions are low yield, but I disagree. PBL sessions are a great place where learning issues are developed and various topics are synthesized. It is neither a group study session, nor a teaching session. You should leave a PBL session with questions, not answers.
 
Hey Tex, you just might be the guy that makes the PBL pathway suck like a Hoover for everyone else?! :smuggrin: :D
 
PT2MD said:
Regarding the article you cited:


teaching macroeconomics than traditional lecture–discussion (p = .05). Additional analyses provided evidence that PBL was more effective than traditional instruction with students of average verbal ability and below, students who were more interested in learning economics, and students who were most and least confident in their ability to solve problems.

----
Um...yeah I have plenty of questions....
Click to expand...

This was the first google result I found when I typed in PBL research. If you actually looked at the data, you would have seen that PBL was also found to have greater effectiveness than traditional instruction with students of above average verbal ability. Although, I am inclined to think that given the evidence I've seen on this board, the former may apply...

And who cares if you're learning economic, medicine, or how to read a research paper properly. The bottom line, is that research has shown that PBL works better. I have better things to do with my time than to look up the research for you.

If you really want to know if PBL works or not, then go to a scholarly search engine, and type in PBL medical school and see what comes up.

As Penn State's excellent PBL site states (bold added to help you read the important things :rolleyes:):

  • Researchers have found that students generally favor problem based learning classes. They therefore attend classes more regularly and develop better attitudes toward learning.
  • Problem based learning students scored higher on the clinically oriented standardized medical exams than students in traditional courses.
  • Students in PBL courses are more likely to adopt deep approaches to learning and to become self-directed learners.
Click to expand...

And please don't go blasting my research links without even trying to find your own. It makes you look bad.
 
Looks like I was right; PBL polarizes people like crazy.
 
I think the bottomline is that medical students have different learning styles. PBL is good for some and not for others. This is why we currently have choices of curriculum. At the end, if the results are at least the same, it doesn't matter. I hope folks can find the curriculum format that makes sense for them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Next unread thread

Similar threads

D
Should I add more DO schools?
Replies
6
Views
819
Goro
Goro
T
Should I quit my job more than six months prior to starting med school in 2022?
Replies
8
Views
2K
howdoiknow
H
DocSherman
Is the current cycle moving faster than normal or is this business as usual?
Replies
23
Views
1K
DocSherman
DocSherman
M
SMP or study for MCAT more
Replies
4
Views
987
Osminog
Osminog
Eren.Yeager
DO Students, what's your school-life balance like?
Replies
7
Views
1K
drthedude
D
Top