Pbl

[ugashaun]

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So this is the only pbl thread for dental schools. Looking for some insight from people applying and people who are already in dental school. Got the interview invite from USC yesterday, and can't help but be excited. Still trying to figure out if the pal +110k/yr price tag is worth it. Here is USC's explanation for the pal: http://www.usc.edu/hsc/dental/students/PBL2/inanutshell.html

If PBL is as wonderful as everyone at USC thinks, then why haven't all the other schools jumped on board the pbl ship?

 

[amalgamgrillz]

In my opinion, PBL only works if you're surrounded by more intelligent people who will push you to your academic potential. All the PBL schools like to brag that "they've adopted the same teaching method done at Harvard." The difference? Harvard doesn't accept stupid people (for the most part) They take 35 geniuses, or people with the potential to become geniuses. They're not taking Billy Bob or Shaniqua, simply because they're the first generation college grad in their family, they're the right skin color, or accepted off the bottom of the waitlist because they were the only one who could afford it.

Sorry, but I, personally, am not going to be pushed by the average student with average DATs and average GPAs; vice-versa, I don't want to be the one holding some genius back because I don't entirely understand the complexities of orognathic surgeries (yet). I'm paying you hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach me, not to hook me up with an (often) less-intelligent classmate who doesn't have the full answers to my questions.

PBL is essentially equivalent to learning dentistry from wikipedia, but more prone to errors. I can google my questions and get better answers from it than some other student who only studied for 6 hours last night because , for some reason, he felt the need to spend time with his kids/wife (or go to the bar). No thanks, not for me.

After seeing how poorly it was done at Indiana (spoke to 3 students/friends there who said it's frustrating and not effective), I've cancelled my interviews at Case and USC. So there's the silver lining - someone else can enjoy the wonders of PROBLEM-based teaching.

Oh, also, for all you gunners out there - have fun helping out the competition! I don't want to make it even harder for myself to specialize, if I'm teaching my competition tricks of the trade.

 

[duckdds]

In my opinion, PBL only works if you're surrounded by more intelligent people who will push you to your academic potential. All the PBL schools like to brag that "they've adopted the same teaching method done at Harvard." The difference? Harvard doesn't accept stupid people (for the most part) They take 35 geniuses, or people with the potential to become geniuses. They're not taking Billy Bob or Shaniqua, simply because they're the first generation college grad in their family, they're the right skin color, or accepted off the bottom of the waitlist because they were the only one who could afford it.

Sorry, but I, personally, am not going to be pushed by the average student with average DATs and average GPAs; vice-versa, I don't want to be the one holding some genius back because I don't entirely understand the complexities of orognathic surgeries (yet). I'm paying you hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach me, not to hook me up with an (often) less-intelligent classmate who doesn't have the full answers to my questions.

PBL is essentially equivalent to learning dentistry from wikipedia, but more prone to errors. I can google my questions and get better answers from it than some other student who only studied for 6 hours last night because , for some reason, he felt the need to spend time with his kids/wife (or go to the bar). No thanks, not for me.

After seeing how poorly it was done at Indiana (spoke to 3 students/friends there who said it's frustrating and not effective), I've cancelled my interviews at Case and USC. So there's the silver lining - someone else can enjoy the wonders of PROBLEM-based teaching.

Oh, also, for all you gunners out there - have fun helping out the competition! I don't want to make it even harder for myself to specialize, if I'm teaching my competition tricks of the trade.

In defense of PBL, I don't think you will be surrounded by "stupid people" in your group as you described. The students you will be interacting with have gone through the same process you have and succeeded, so they are technically smart individuals. In addition, everyone, if not most students, in dental school wants to do well. It isn't undergrad where you have one or two students in a group that actually do the work, and the rest slack off and leech off the people who did stuff. Therefore, I don't think one will have an issue with imbalance in a group (though I can't testify that from experience).

I think what's frustrating for PBL students in dental school is that there is so much information to learn, and not enough lecture time. They have to spend more time looking up information and concepts where as didactic schools just hand them out, so they also end up studying less because they spend the majority of time researching. If they have to learn less material than didactic schools, then that'd be a different story but I don't think that's the case.

PBL would only work with only certain types of individuals and you would know if you like or hate it.

I would like to hear more about PBL (pros/cons) if any dental student is going through it.

 

[amalgamgrillz]

In defense of PBL, I don't think you will be surrounded by "stupid people" in your group as you described. The students you will be interacting with have gone through the same process you have and succeeded, so they are technically smart individuals. In addition, everyone, if not most students, in dental school wants to do well. It isn't undergrad where you have one or two students in a group that actually do the work, and the rest slack off and leech off the people who did stuff. Therefore, I don't think one will have an issue with imbalance in a group (though I can't testify that from experience).

I think what's frustrating for PBL students in dental school is that there is so much information to learn, and not enough lecture time. They have to spend more time looking up information and concepts where as didactic schools just hand them out, so they also end up studying less because they spend the majority of time researching. If they have to learn less material than didactic schools, then that'd be a different story but I don't think that's the case.

PBL would only work with only certain types of individuals and you would know if you like or hate it.

I would like to hear more about PBL (pros/cons) if any dental student is going through it.

I didn't mean everyone was stupid. But there are a lot of people who don't grasp the information as well as I need them to, in order to teach me. I expect a lot out of myself, and I expect even more out of my instructors. So, if they can't explain it well or know the material in detail, I'm gonna be one unpleasant classmate.

Yes, I understand that dental students are generally more professional than undergrad, but I know for a fact they still party and have a good time. Great, good for them. But in a PBL setting, if someone in my group comes in hungover, sleeps, or doesn't participate - I will cut a biatch. It doesn't even have to partying; I don't care what they do in their spare time (gym, wife/kids, research, etc.), as long as it's second to learning the material to contribute to the PBL sessions.

I hope everyone will be contributing and doing their homework as intensely as I will be, but often, someone elses effort isn't good enough for me. I want to be learning from experts in the field, who do this inside and out for a living. So, if other fellow students can't provide me with learning experience equivalent to that of a seasoned PhD instructor...what am I paying for, exactly?

 

[crax]

I didn't mean everyone was stupid. But there are a lot of people who don't grasp the information as well as I need them to, in order to teach me. So, if they can't explain it well or know the material in detail,....
they still party and have a good time. Great, good for them. But in a PBL setting, if someone in my group comes in hungover, sleeps, or doesn't participate - I will cut a biatch. I don't care what they do in their spare time (gym, wife/kids, research, etc.), as long as it's second to learning the material to contribute to the PBL sessions.

You might want to reread your post. It makes you sound like an arrogant ******* whom no one should want in their group. Almost everyone i shadowed stated something to the effect of dental school being a right of passage, not a medium to learn dentistry.

Who's to say that YOU will understand the information enough to teach others?

It's laughable you expect things such as wife/kids, research, the gym, and enjoying ones self to all be second to "learning the material to contribute to the PBL sessions". Many people have different priorities, i would consider my wife & kids one of the most important.

I hope you succeed in forever turning off your phone, tv, and computer to make sure you learn all of "the material to contribute to the PBL sessions"

(hope i didn't get trolled here)
Good luck 🙂

 

[full]

I don't know how other schools do their PBL, but at USC you spend 8 hrs/week in PBL sessions. Two sessions, 4hrs each.

You don't learn anything during that time. The entire time is spent just figuring out what you need to learn--the learning topics (e.g kidney, liver, etc).

In fact it's against the rules for the facilitator to teach during that time, they are only supposed to steer you toward choosing the correct learning topics based on the case.

Then you go home after your 4 hr Monday morning PBL session and you are responsible for creating a study guide for the other people in your group to learn from. So you go and you copy/paste a bunch of information(pics, text, etc) from the web on say "liver anatomy" (if you were assigned that learning topic) and email to everyone in the group. Usually 8 people per group, so 8 learning topics will be mailed to everyone twice a week--one per pbl session. Then everyone in the group is responsible for reading your copy/pasted word document with information on liver anatomy. There will be 8 of them total to read (liver anatomy, liver physiology, liver lab values, etc. until you get 8 topics). Then after 8 weeks or so they test you on everything without actually giving you a study guide, so you are dumbfounded about what will be on the test.

 

[amalgamgrillz]

You might want to reread your post. It makes you sound like an arrogant ******* whom no one should want in their group. Almost everyone i shadowed stated something to the effect of dental school being a right of passage, not a medium to learn dentistry.

Who's to say that YOU will understand the information enough to teach others?

It's laughable you expect things such as wife/kids, research, the gym, and enjoying ones self to all be second to "learning the material to contribute to the PBL sessions". Many people have different priorities, i would consider my wife & kids one of the most important.

I hope you succeed in forever turning off your phone, tv, and computer to make sure you learn all of "the material to contribute to the PBL sessions"

(hope i didn't get trolled here)
Good luck 🙂

1. Going to dental school is not a right (of passage) - it's a privilege. You need to continually work your as* off to prove you deserve to be there. You are not there to just pass through the fire and get your degree - that's undergrad. You're now learning for your patients and for society; it's not longer enough to just pass, so you'd better be striving for perfection and learning as much as you can.

2. I never said I would be the best or would know the most. Hence I said "vice-versa, I don't want to be the one holding some genius back because I don't entirely understand the complexities of orognathic surgeries"

3. I agree - many people have different priorities (wife, kids, partying, etc.), which I said was completely fine...just not when it comes to MY learning. Go ahead and take little Timmy to his 2-hour soccer tournament, but if it appears like you could have used an extra 2 hours of study for the PBL session, then you're not only messing up your own edcuation, but other students' learning.

4. Thank you. Good luck to your group being placed second, third, and fourth on your priority list to soccer practice, PTA meetings, and picnics.

 

[ugashaun]

Full, tell me more about USC's PBL. I'm interviewing there on 11/11. Do you see USC as worth the astronomical price?

 

[bluepills]

I wonder how PBL schools (other than Harvard) do on their boards.