PBL

[QuinnTheEskimo]

Why is everyone so down on PBL? Seems like everyone here thinks it's a waste of time.

Personally I hate lectures, zone out and can never pay attention. I think PBL would be good for a student like me.

Thoughts?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Life Sucks]

Well, it's whatever works for you, tiger?

 

[medmedman]

Why is everyone so down on PBL? Seems like everyone here thinks it's a waste of time.

Personally I hate lectures, zone out and can never pay attention. I think PBL would be good for a student like me.

Thoughts?

I do think it varies. Some people love it while others hate it. I'm with you - I hate lectures. I don't learn by listening to someone speak for an hour or two.

 

[SunsFun]

I hate doing extra leg work and not knowing how much exactly I need to dig up every week for a case given that none of the material is not the test that matters the most. I'd much rather attend lecture and sleep through half of it. At least something on there is useful for the test. And I can learn how to be doctor (the clinical staff) on the wards.

 

[deleted407021]

I'm very excited for the prospect of attending a school with 100% PBL. Like many, I get very little out of lectures and instead prefer to read the text to understand the basic science. Working with a team to then apply that information to a real world problem would be the ideal fit for me. Mercer has such a program, and it has been very well implemented.

https://medicine.mercer.edu/admissions/md/information/problem-based-learning/

 

[mcloaf]

You're pretty much going to be teaching yourself the stuff either way. Class materials are just a guide to follow and a warning shot as far as what's on the tests. The real question is would you rather get the lecture out of the way 2x as fast in the comfort of home wearing pajamas before you can move on to actually doing something productive, or would you like to trudge to campus and argue with gunners who looked up a bunch of obscure papers on pubmed they don't even understand so they can wait eagerly to get pimped by your small group facilitator.

That being said, there are a few wayward souls out there who do actually prefer PBL. Pray for them.

 

[QuinnTheEskimo]

You're pretty much going to be teaching yourself the stuff either way. Class materials are just a guide to follow and a warning shot as far as what's on the tests. The real question is would you rather get the lecture out of the way 2x as fast in the comfort of home wearing pajamas before you can move on to actually doing something productive, or would you like to trudge to campus and argue with gunners who looked up a bunch of obscure papers on pubmed they don't even understand so they can wait eagerly to get pimped by your small group facilitator.

That being said, there are a few wayward souls out there who do actually prefer PBL. Pray for them.

Except it seems like the PBL schools actually have much LESS in-class time

 

[Ismet]

PBL is just an inefficient way to learn something. The actual material taught or reinforced in one 4-hour PBL session (two 2-hour sessions) can be learned independently in less than 20 minutes. I don't need to sit in a room while people present information they found on Wikipedia the night before. I can do that myself.

I think it's a good way to introduce first years to how cases are presented, and there were some instances where I thought the small group was beneficial (anatomy, micro). But overall, I wasn't a fan. We have workshops in 2nd year, which are much more efficient and beneficial than PBL was.

 

[Oso]

I'm excited for PBL. I saw some sessions at a few schools and the students seemed motivated and excited. Most of the students seemed to really like it. I like how the cases are presented, and I think I'll be much more engaged than in a normal lecture. I always got distracted/slept during lectures in college but actively participated in small discussion classes. Also, it's not like they have 100% PBL, it's usually a mix of it and traditional lecture. Seems good to me.

It's definitely not for some people though, so it's a good thing to consider when deciding between schools.

 

[274631]

I hate lectures and love the idea of PBL. In undergrad and now in grad school I so much prefer my classes that are smaller and discussion based. And I learn better that way. I also think it seems so much more applicable to the real practice of medicine.

I do think there are some things that need to be in lecture but I would abhore all of the first 2 years being lecture based.

 

[Chir0nex]

Part of the problem is that the precise way that PBL is implemented varies greatly from school to school, and also depends heavily on the quality of your group/preceptor. Some schools use it as an adjunct to lecture with a focus on developing team dynamics in the context of a clinical case. Others use it as an alternative to lecture altogether. In most cases, while the theory sounds good, it often comes down to execution, and unless if you have really good faculty, it can be difficult to pull off properly. That being said, the biggest issue is that PBL is often mandatory while lecture generally is not, and if there is one thing med students hate it is mandatory class regardless of format.

 

[NuttyEngDude]

Part of the problem is that the precise way that PBL is implemented varies greatly from school to school, and also depends heavily on the quality of your group/preceptor. Some schools use it as an adjunct to lecture with a focus on developing team dynamics in the context of a clinical case. Others use it as an alternative to lecture altogether. In most cases, while the theory sounds good, it often comes down to execution, and unless if you have really good faculty, it can be difficult to pull off properly. That being said, the biggest issue is that PBL is often mandatory while lecture generally is not, and if there is one thing med students hate it is mandatory class regardless of format.

-- This is the biggest issue I saw with PBL when I was interviewing. Decided it had too many risks/downsides for not really much gain that could not be similarly obtained from traditional methods ("we get great board scores").

 

[mcloaf]

That being said, the biggest issue is that PBL is often mandatory while lecture generally is not, and if there is one thing med students hate it is mandatory class regardless of format.

Yeah. I'd caution all the premeds posting about how excited they are by the idea of PBL to remember that they're looking at things from an undergrad perspective. When you realize the tidal wave of **** you have to learn each week in addition to whatever extracurriculars/research and god forbid personal hobbies are competing for your time in medical school, the idea of gathering together multiple times a week to sit around and chat becomes insufferably inefficient to many (at least compared to being able to stream lecture at 2x on your own schedule and from wherever you want).

 

[mehc012]

Yeah. I'd caution all the premeds posting about how excited they are by the idea of PBL to remember that they're looking at things from an undergrad perspective. When you realize the tidal wave of **** you have to learn each week in addition to whatever extracurriculars/research and god forbid personal hobbies are competing for your time in medical school, the idea of gathering together multiple times a week to sit around and chat becomes insufferably inefficient to many (at least compared to being able to stream lecture at 2x on your own schedule and from wherever you want).

Exactly...as a "still-premed" myself, I found it interesting how this thread was "premeds who think PBL will be awesome" and "med students who think PBL sucks", with very little crossover.

 

[solitarius]

I thought the point of PBL was to introduce the diagnostic reasoning process. Therefore, the issue isn't whether you learn the material faster.

Withholding judgment on PBL until I go through it.

 

[Ismet]

PBL on paper vs. PBL in practice are two completely different things. Most pre-meds are familiar with the concept of PBL on paper, which may sound like a good, interactive way to learn, but most PBL experiences don't pan out that way.

Don't even get me started on TBL.

I thought the point of PBL was to introduce the diagnostic reasoning process.

That's a component of PBL, but I wouldn't say it's the point.

 

[NuttyEngDude]

Without getting into a semantic discussion about "like," there are some schools that only have or have PBL has a major part of their curriculum, they sort of require you to know if you like it before you decide to matriculate.

 

[Psai]

Notice how most people that are excited about PBL never experienced it. No one likes lecture. Most lecturers are boring and hard to pay attention to. You don't learn much from lecture. Lecture is there to point out the topics that are important that you need to learn by yourself. But lecture sucking doesn't make PBL good. PBL is mostly you listening to idiots that know as little or less than you share random factoids from wikipedia or up-to-date (for the serious kids) that they barely understand. You look at the propaganda that medical schools pump out and you think you'd be engaged but if you think listening to experts in a field with years of experience in front of a classroom is boring, try listening to your clueless classmates.

 

[QuinnTheEskimo]

Notice how most people are excited about PBL never experienced it. No one likes lecture. Most lecturers are boring and pay attention to. You don't learn much from lecture. Lecture is there to point out the topics that are important that you need to learn by yourself. But lecture sucking doesn't make PBL good. PBL is mostly you listening to idiots that know as little or less than you sharing random factoids from wikipedia or up-to-date (for the serious kids) that they barely understand. You look at the propaganda that medical schools pump out and you think you'd be engaged but if you think listening to experts in a field with years of experience in front of a classroom is boring, try listening to your clueless classmates.

My main concern is retention of information. I feel like case-based problems will stick in your mind more. I don't remember **** from any of my lecture-based upper level science classes. I brain dumped after the final exams. But I have taken some more "PBL" style classes and I remember a lot more from those.

So my question is, does PBL prepare you better when you are actually on the wards third year, and need to know stuff?

 

[deleted407021]

Yeah. I'd caution all the premeds posting about how excited they are by the idea of PBL to remember that they're looking at things from an undergrad perspective. When you realize the tidal wave of **** you have to learn each week in addition to whatever extracurriculars/research and god forbid personal hobbies are competing for your time in medical school, the idea of gathering together multiple times a week to sit around and chat becomes insufferably inefficient to many (at least compared to being able to stream lecture at 2x on your own schedule and from wherever you want).

Obviously, it is on a school by school basis. The one I am particularly interested in has done a very good job of implementing the PBL curriculum and the students I talk to really enjoy the style and claim that it is head and shoulders above lecture based curricula. They do have a lot of reading, as you stated, but they also report as having plenty of time for other pursuits. There's a reason this school is so popular in my area.

 

[dehydrogenase]

Just thought I'd contribute as a student currently in a PBL program.

I am an MS2 in a sort of hybrid PBL program (Drexel's PIL). The curriculum has small-group, faculty facilitator mediated, case-based learning at its core with supplementary lectures. It is pretty well organized and there is no ambiguity as to what we will be tested on. I find small group to be incredibly useful in solidifying important concepts and clinical correlates of disease, not to mention getting us used to things like interpreting lab data, and the majority of our peer-directed learning (eg classmates presenting on topics in small group to clarify aspects of the case) are very useful supplements or even replacements to book or lecture learning.

I LOVE my curriculum and can't imagine doing medical school via traditional lectures alone. Talk about boring. Obviously, PBL isn't for everyone, but it also isn't just one particular type of student who thrives in PBL. We have a wide diversity of educational backgrounds, learning styles, and personality styles who succeed in our curriculum. And yeah, we do the same (most years very slightly better than) our classmates in the traditional lecture-based curriculum.

Feel free to PM me with specific questions.

 

[WildEMDoc]

PBL sucks, I thought coming in it would be better than lecture, no, its not.

I'd rather go to lecture for 4 more hours a week, than sit in PBL.

 

[NickNaylor]

The problem I see with PBL is that it is highly facilitator- and peer-dependent. If you have great group members and facilitators that know what they're doing and do a modicum of planning, then the experience can be fun and informative. If that doesn't happen, though, it can be miserable - you spend time talking about things that are irrelevant, you have no idea what you actually were supposed to take away from the case/problem, and, if your team sucks, you may not even get much out of the experience due to poor preparation and limited teaching.

You could say the same thing about lectures, but the difference for me lies in the fact that PBL at most schools tends to be required. If it ends up being a waste of time and not effective, you're stuck. If lectures suck, you can generally just not go to them, unless your school has an attendance policy or something like that.

 

[dehydrogenase]

The problem I see with PBL is that it is highly facilitator- and peer-dependent. If you have great group members and facilitators that know what they're doing and do a modicum of planning, then the experience can be fun and informative. If that doesn't happen, though, it can be miserable - you spend time talking about things that are irrelevant, you have no idea what you actually were supposed to take away from the case/problem, and, if your team sucks, you may not even get much out of the experience due to poor preparation and limited teaching.

You could say the same thing about lectures, but the difference for me lies in the fact that PBL at most schools tends to be required. If it ends up being a waste of time and not effective, you're stuck. If lectures suck, you can generally just not go to them, unless your school has an attendance policy or something like that.

I think you're clearly right about the importance of motivated group members and competent facilitators, but you're making it seem like having a combination of group members and facilitators good enough to make the experience productive is the exception rather than the rule. This is the opposite of my experience. All of the facilitators I've worked with (6 different ones at my school) have been more than competent, and it's very rare to have a group of classmates so bad that it stops the experience from being productive (you could even argue that learning to deal with this kind of group member is a very useful skill).

Of course, this is my individual experience.

 

[NickNaylor]

I think you're clearly right about the importance of motivated group members and competent facilitators, but you're making it seem like having a combination of group members and facilitators good enough to make the experience productive is the exception rather than the rule. This is the opposite of my experience. All of the facilitators I've worked with (6 different ones at my school) have been more than competent, and it's very rare to have a group of classmates so bad that it stops the experience from being productive (you could even argue that learning to deal with this kind of group member is a very useful skill).

Of course, this is my individual experience.

Perhaps. My experiences with PBL were "meh" at best and "this is a huge waste of time" at worst. It's not that every experience was terrible, but that even the good experiences were just mediocre. At the end of the day, I'd rather have as much free time as possible, and I'm personally more efficient guiding my own studying rather than moving along with a group of others. People have different preferences and learning styles, and it doesn't surprise me that people at PBL schools would like PBL as those students typically had a preference for the PBL system. It also wouldn't surprise me to know that schools with PBL curricula do it very well: they have a history and experience with the method, thus it's likely been refined over the years based on student input.

 

[dehydrogenase]

Let me make another clarification. I do not think that students in traditional lecture-based curricula who have occasional small-group learning experiences are adequately prepared to comment on the quality/utility of true PBL curricula. Getting acclimated to the small-group and case-based learning process takes time and effort. Of course, the first couple of weeks of first year are rough and can be frustrating, but once you learn how it works and how you and your classmates work best in the group, as well as getting the hang of things like hypothesis generation and data analysis, that's when the process starts working. A few small-group learning experiences in a semester aren't enough to get to the point of being comfortable with this kind of learning. Again, that's my opinion.

 

[RogueUnicorn]

Let me make another clarification. I do not think that students in traditional lecture-based curricula who have occasional small-group learning experiences are adequately prepared to comment on the quality/utility of true PBL curricula. Getting acclimated to the small-group and case-based learning process takes time and effort. Of course, the first couple of weeks of first year are rough and can be frustrating, but once you learn how it works and how you and your classmates work best in the group, as well as getting the hang of things like hypothesis generation and data analysis, that's when the process starts working. A few small-group learning experiences in a semester aren't enough to get to the point of being comfortable with this kind of learning. Again, that's my opinion.

In that vein how are you adequately prepared to comment on whether or not the number of PBL sessions in these various curricula are not enough to get comfortable with that learning type?

 

[knv2u]

What exactly is PBL? I usually would Google an acronym, but there are often multiple possibilities.

 

[dehydrogenase]

In that vein how are you adequately prepared to comment on whether or not the number of PBL sessions in these various curricula are not enough to get comfortable with that learning type?

I guess that's fair. My opinion there is based on my experience in my curriculum, which was that, after even the first 10 or 15 sessions of case-based learning (about a month for us, with 3-3hr sessions per week), I was just starting to get the hang of it. I am assuming that learning the process would be less, rather than more, efficient in situations where the case-based learning was less frequent, as in curricula where there is only occasional case-based learning. I think that's a reasonable assumption.

 

[dehydrogenase]

What exactly is PBL? I usually would Google an acronym, but there are often multiple possibilities.

PBL is problem-based learning. A synonym is case-based learning.

 

[knv2u]

PBL is problem-based learning. A synonym is case-based learning.

Thanks!

 

[Syndicate]

Choose a school that fits your learning style.

I don't like PBL or lectures. I learn everything by reading out of a textbook.

 

[smile8888]

I have been reading many criticisms on PBL. But is there any school that is actually known to do a pretty good job with PBLs?

 

[dehydrogenase]

I have been reading many criticisms on PBL. But is there any school that is actually known to do a pretty good job with PBLs?

By what metric?

Having no experience with other PBL-type curricula, I can only comment on the way Drexel does PBL, which is in a sort of hybrid fashion (as I explained in my post above). I personally think the curriculum is very strong. We also have a unique built-in system for comparison of outcomes since we have a parallel more traditional lecture-based curriculum: the PBL students do about the same on boards as our counterparts in the traditional curriculum (and we both do pretty well. Average last year was 230 I believe).

 

[fbtkdrbs]

Some may find PBL a waste of time because it does not suit with your learning style. I think PBL is essential if you are going to work within a medical team. It is also designed to teach you soft skills that you would not get from lectures.