Call it what you like, but there's a huge difference between someone getting up and lecturing on a subject and someone sort of moderating discussions between and within groups.
I agree, night and day roles for the faculty in PBL and lectures. Lecturing medical students is like lecturing my kids...it's a passive learning process that often doesn't stick.
Lecturing is easy - ask any parent. Directing self-learning is much more difficult.
But seriously, there is much more effort than you appreciate that goes into constructing and running a PBL case. Students are not left to fend for themselves. There are very specific themes and goals for each week. There may be dozens of learning objectives. The facilitator has to make sure there are no gross errors in your group group AND make sure you stay on target.
However...
The relative amount of effort put in by the faculty is beside the point. The question I still contend is whether PBL is right for a particular student. And I still argue we cannot determine that.
Al said:
The latter requires minimal effort on the professor's part. If you're the kind of person who'd do well learning as a PBL curriculum makes you - that is, if you learn well on your own - why would you want to go somewhere that forces you to attend classes and work at the rate of the weakest link?
I think you are not gasping the concept of PBL - you don't (usually) argue or "work". You divide and conquer. You identify group knowledge gaps at the beginning of the week, send people off to learn on their own, regroup and teach each other as the "expert".
You go very in depth on your assigned task for the week -almost always you go way more in-depth than ever required for USMLE. Since you are responsible for the whole group's learning, and you come back and defend what you learned, usually you do a really good job of learning your topic.
Often, they way it works is that if you know that you are deficient, say, in biochemistry you volunteer to learn it for the group's sake. It is a self-correcting process.
My PharmD classmate doesn't take pharmacology topics for the group, but he is quick to correct mistakes in pharm discussions as he is the expert. Likewise, I don't take the electrical physiology or medical device-related topics, as I wouldn't be learning.
You force yourself to keep pace with your classmates. If you can't, you don't actually slow down the group. If it is obvious someone isn't getting something - the group moves on anyways. The upside of this is that you become VERY aware of your shortcomings in PBL.
But...
I digress, you and I still can't answer the OP's REAL question of whether PBL is right for him/her. This cannot be answered.
The OP might as well have a poll for current med students asking if they love or hate it.
My only reason for posting on this thread is because the haters do a disservice by making gross generalizations about PBL, when really both sides are offering opinions - only
some of which are even based on anecdotal experience with PBL.
Now now, Myuu...it's more of we can't sleep-in and like to get our learning in before the prune juice hits us. Plus the malls aren't open first thing in the morning, so if gives us someplace to walk to... 
This is almost as heated as the circumcision debate!
