PBL vs. Lecture-Based

[btowngirl]

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I am applying this summer and was wondering if anyone could make comments on PBL or lecture based curriculum. What does your school have? Do you like it? Pros? Cons? Any suggestions? I know you guys are busy, so thanks for your time.

 

[Seaglass]

Try a search, it has been discussed to death.

C

 

[Jalby]

It's more in depth than just PBL vs. Lecture. There are traditional curriculums, system based with mostly lectures, system based with mostly PBL. There isn't any traditional PBL programs.

 

[littlealex]

Can we renew this discussion? How many med students in PBL systems actually love it? Does it prepare you well for the boards? Are the small group sessions actually useful?

 

[Ashers]

Can we renew this discussion? How many med students in PBL systems actually love it? Does it prepare you well for the boards? Are the small group sessions actually useful?

There have been many threads on this recently, and a lot of times they get moved to pre-allo. So search there and here again and use variations of terms.

 

[Bananas Foster]

Ugh, always movin' teh posts to pre-allos!

For what its worth, I'm not a student, but PBL doesn't seem like such a hot topic it might have been a few years ago. I know Ohio State actually dropped its PBL curriculum a couple years ago. And when I interviewed at Iowa, we got a taste of their Case Based Learning (seems similar to PBL, no?) and some students admitted though it can be interesting and useful, often times its kinda a pain in the ***.

Most schools do have a hybrid approach, Iowa had Case based learning only once or twice a week I think. For me, I know I'm a big fan of lecture based curriculum. Whenever you have students lead the learning it ends up taking forever. Also, its much easier to skip a lecture than a PBL session.

 

[seraph524]

didactic > PBL

To me, lecture based tells you in black and white, what you need to know.

 

[45408]

PBL sucks, and it's much easier to skip lectures. Self study is where it's at.

 

[notdeadyet]

PBL sucks, and it's much easier to skip lectures. Self study is where it's at.

Ditto, to a point. I'd sooner stab myself in the eyeballs than go to a PBL-heavy school, but having a PBL occassionally is useful, especially early on.

PBL and the questions they ask during them are much more similar to the board questions than the retrieval questions you get a lot of in early testing. Besides which, unless you're a naturally gifted superstar, seeing how folks work through things has been helpful.

That said, an hour or two a week is enough.

 

[littlealex]

Bah! Always moving t3h thre4ds to pre-allo. How would pre-allow people, without experience in medical school, be able to intelligently discuss this thread?

I'm struggling to decide between a traditional lecture based public school and a pure PBL (2 hours of lecture a week) school. I think I'm just worried the PBL school, which doesn't tell you exactly what you need to know, will not adequately prepare me for the boards.

 

[Flaxmoore]

Go lecture-based if you can. My school uses 2 hours of PBL weekly, mixed with lecture. Supposedly, the PBL reinforces the lecture, but the computer program we use knows what tests we need to finish the case and hides them! 🙁 It might be of use in second year with Pathology, but first year? I'd rather straight lecture.

 

[seraph524]

You can usually skip lecture...you can't skip PBL. I like my sleep.

 

[mglavin]

The amount you learn in a two hour PBL session is equal to about 20 minutes of lecture which is equal to about 10 minutes of studying by yourself.

The learning to work together thing is best taught in anatomy lab. PBL is a huge waste of time.

 

[Instatewaiter]

My school does basic science based first year and organ systems second year. We do some PBL (we call it team based learning) first year. It is a terrible waste of time. It is terribly inefficient and really pretty worthless.

We have case based learning second year to flesh out the lectures. For instance during the respiratory block we would have cases that would compare the various diseases that wheeze or compare the various obstructive diseases after we had already had full lectures on these topics. TBL/Cases are much, much better. when you are trying to learn the presentations and distinguish between different pathophysiologies.

Really I have no idea how schools get through things like Biochem or histology in PBL.

Overall I vote against PBL

 

[pseudoknot]

I go to the same school as Instatewaiter, and I really cannot overstate what a worthless waste of time our implementation of PBL is. I would rather sit on the floor in an empty room doing nothing for six hours than be in TBL for two hours. However, we don't have that choice, because attendance is mandatory. I would avoid PBL like the plague. Granted, our version of it is particularly awful (we break into "small groups" with all 186 of us in the same lecture hall) but the whole idea is terrible.

I wish sometimes they would just grade us on how long we can keep our arms in buckets of ice water or something similar. Ultimately it would be more humane.

 

[littlealex]

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full...al&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

Good article to read, although a little one sided.

 

[Ashers]

I go to the same school as Instatewaiter, and I really cannot overstate what a worthless waste of time our implementation of PBL is. I would rather sit on the floor in an empty room doing nothing for six hours than be in TBL for two hours. However, we don't have that choice, because attendance is mandatory. I would avoid PBL like the plague. Granted, our version of it is particularly awful (we break into "small groups" with all 186 of us in the same lecture hall) but the whole idea is terrible.

I wish sometimes they would just grade us on how long we can keep our arms in buckets of ice water or something similar. Ultimately it would be more humane.

I would prefer anything to that... stupid Raynaud's. If I could hold any cold, I'd so be up for that more than PBL.

As to why do they move these threads to pre-allo. In SOOO many of the many threads they have moved, they explain why... allo is a place for med students to talk about med student issues, pre-allo is for making decisions about med schools, pre-med issues, etc. And med students look at and respond to threads in pre-allo. (To all the mods who move threads; thank you, and I'm sorry for the bad paraphrasing.)

 

[seraph524]

The amount you learn in a two hour PBL session is equal to about 20 minutes of lecture which is equal to about 10 minutes of studying by yourself.

The learning to work together thing is best taught in anatomy lab. PBL is a huge waste of time.

lmao 👍

 

[pseudoknot]

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full...al&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

Good article to read, although a little one sided.

Sorry, but I'm not interested in reading any article about PBL that doesn't start out by admitting it was created by Satan himself.

 

[CCLCMer]

Can we renew this discussion? How many med students in PBL systems actually love it? Does it prepare you well for the boards? Are the small group sessions actually useful?

There really are tons of threads about PBL. I just posted about why I like PBL and why it won't doom you for the boards a few days ago. Check out this thread: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=6175520#post6175520

There are links to more posts and some websites and articles in there.

 

[blurry]

PBL may have it's advantages and be all the rage and all, but I don't think I want to base my entire medical education around a style of learning that I have never experienced before. I'm sticking to what works for me and has gotten me this far.

 

[Jolie South]

Are there any schools that are 100% PBL?

I was under the impression that it was an integrated type of deal, like instead of 8 hours of straight lecture, it was split into 4 hours lecture with some PBL thrown in later in the day.

 

[blurry]

There are a few here in Canada that are mostly all PBL.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

I'm a fan of traditional curriculum with no required attendance because that allows me to stay at home and teach myself what I need to know.

 

[Flaxmoore]

Are there any schools that are 100% PBL?

I was under the impression that it was an integrated type of deal, like instead of 8 hours of straight lecture, it was split into 4 hours lecture with some PBL thrown in later in the day.

Ohio University's DO school has an all-PBL track.

 

[notdeadyet]

Are there any schools that are 100% PBL?

Unless they've changed curriculum, University of Hawaii is about 100% PBL...

 

[Concubine]

Ohio University's DO school has an all-PBL track.

This is true, although not for all the students. You have to apply to do the PBL only route. About 30 of the approximately 104 students do it. The rest do traditional lecture.

 

[kevster2001]

It's really hard to squeeze in all the science information you need on an all PBL curriculum. Any med school that offers PBL usually have it as a supplement to what they're learning in lecture. For what it's worth I dont think it's very useful as a learning tool for new material since each case has really obvious tell-tale signs of whatever disease you JUST learned in lecture the day before. A lot of time is wasted talking about nothing and making empty conjectures on medicine you dont know yet. That's from a first year's perspective anyways...

 

[aaj117]

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=251985

 

[littlealex]

Are there any schools that are 100% PBL?

I was under the impression that it was an integrated type of deal, like instead of 8 hours of straight lecture, it was split into 4 hours lecture with some PBL thrown in later in the day.

Case Western is nearly all PBL, only around 2 hours of lecture a week.

\
p.s. Cleveland Clinic's PBL curriculum yielded 100% Step1 pass rate and 230 average last year.
p.p.s. edited/stand corrected.

 

[CCLCMer]

Case Western is nearly all PBL, only around 2 hours of lecture a week.

\
p.s. Cleveland Clinic's pure PBL curriculum yielded 100% Step1 pass rate and 230 average last year.

Hey littlealex, I PMed you.

Just to clarify, our curriculum is not pure PBL. It's more like 1/3 PBL. We do 6 hours of PBL per week during years one and two, along with 8 hours of seminar (kind of like lectures but they tend to be more interactive since there are only 32 of us) and we have a few hours per week of other stuff (research seminars, medicine in society, etc.). Plus we have four hours per week of clinic in year 1 and 8 hours per week in year 2.

That being said, I really do like PBL, for all the reasons I've given before, and it's totally true that the CCLCM classes that have taken the boards so far have done really well. I can't say anything about how PBL is at other schools, but I think the way CCLCM does it is really good. Now, if we could just get them to cut back on the FCM (that's our medicine in society course), I'd be ecstatic. Talk about a class that takes way more time than its learning value.... 😛

 

[pseudoknot]

Case Western is nearly all PBL, only around 2 hours of lecture a week.

\
p.s. Cleveland Clinic's PBL curriculum yielded 100% Step1 pass rate and 230 average last year.
p.p.s. edited/stand corrected.

I'd be willing to bet that CCLCM's step I results have more to do with the quality of their students than the curriculum, as with most schools. (That being said, from the descriptions I've read it sounds like their curriculum is very innovative and well-implemented.)

As for all-PBL schools, the Harvard New Pathway, which accounts for most of their med students, is supposedly all PBL and is often (wrongly) claimed to be the first such curriculum. I believe PBL was actually implemented years before by McMaster in Canada.

I still think it's better to have the option of learning on your own. If PBL sessions were optional like lectures then I wouldn't have anything against it.

 

[littlealex]

I still think it's better to have the option of learning on your own. If PBL sessions were optional like lectures then I wouldn't have anything against it.

That's precisely what I don't like about the public schools though. You go there can learn from the webcasted lectures online and read from the print outs at home. It's almost like you're learning by yourself in a library. I interviewed at a few places like that an was not impressed.

With that being said, I think OSU's independent study program students do better on Step1 than the traditional lecture program students... I guess in the end, no matter what system we're under, we still have to learn it ourselves.

This med school thing is hard =(

 

[Ashers]

Unless they've changed curriculum, University of Hawaii is about 100% PBL...

They had basic science lectures 1 day/week 1st year when I interviewed there. Have they trashed those now.

The curriculum is the main reason I decided not to go there.

 

[notdeadyet]

They had basic science lectures 1 day/week 1st year when I interviewed there. Have they trashed those now.

Don't know. But if their lecture consists of 1 day/week in MS I, I'd consider them a PBL school.

The curriculum is the main reason I decided not to go there.

Me too. That, and lack of an offered secondary...

 

[Ashers]

Don't know. But if their lecture consists of 1 day/week in MS I, I'd consider them a PBL school.

Me too. That, and lack of an offered secondary...

I consider them a PBL school, but when I asked the dean how much PBL, he made a big point to say "95%, not 100%."

I got an acceptance despite my lack of enthusiasm in the interviews, but I'm instate; it also didn't make me that happy when the dean said "You're lucky you're instate, otherwise, you would not have had an interview."

 

[Risa]

As for all-PBL schools, the Harvard New Pathway, which accounts for most of their med students, is supposedly all PBL and is often (wrongly) claimed to be the first such curriculum. I believe PBL was actually implemented years before by McMaster in Canada.

Actually, New Pathway (or as it's officially called now, the New Integrated Curriculum--what a mouthful!) has only a moderate amount of PBL. We usually have at least a few hours of lecture a day, with probably 4-10 hours of tutorial (our PBL) a week, depending on the block. Plus, mix in some minicases and lab, both of which are also small-group but not PBL format.

I have mixed feelings on tutorial. My current one is actually fun and educational, but I've also had some really awful ones. I hate lecture; haven't attended in over a year. So I kind of like that tutorial gives me the opportunity to see my classmates and feel like I'm not totally homeschooling 🙂

Pseudoknot, we did that little-groups-all-over-the-lecture-hall thing for some class or another once, and it was horrible. You have my deepest sympathies!