PCL vs PBL vs CBL

[farqueue]

Looking at all these universities, they offer PCL (Patient Centered Learning), PBL (Problem Based Learning) and CBL (Case Based Learning)

What is the fine line between these different approaches? It would be great if we could get some discussion going on and give us some of your viewpoints.

Is there such thing as the 'best' learning approach?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[jllander]

Looking at all these universities, they offer PCL (Patient Centered Learning), PBL (Problem Based Learning) and CBL (Case Based Learning)

What is the fine line between these different approaches? It would be great if we could get some discussion going on and give us some of your viewpoints.

Is there such thing as the 'best' learning approach?

I don't know about PCL, but where I go to school, PBL is case based. I would recommend actually asking the universities how each program is run. You may find that it's all just semantics and the programs are actually very similar. Good luck.

 

[Nerdoscience]

it's all the same. Just different catch phrases.

 

[Anka]

They all sound bad. There's a reason the didactic method of teaching has been around for thousands of years -- it works. It doesn't make any sense to go out and re-create by reading a thousand pages what your professor could have told you in five minutes or, more importantly, your professor could have told the scribe (or video camera) in five minutes, and you can read at your leasure at home. You're first year as a medical student, you're going to have no clue what's important.

I'd look for schools that use PBLs (or CBLs or whatever) as an adjunct to a primarly lecture based (read - self study) curriculum. They're useful to get you thinking, but there's so much information to be transmitted, it's not a great way to do the data dump.

Best,
Anka

 

[nhavens]

I don't know if there are records any where you can look them up or not, but i've always heard that PBL style school had higher board scores vs. traditional lecture based. I just graduated from a school that had a PBL system for the first 2 years and my classes step 1 avg was 231. That being said, we all suck at anatomy b/c that area was not focused on during PBL. (like it isn't focused on in the boards either). Our scores could be the result of barely teaching anatomy and spending more time focusing on the other topics b/c the administrators knew that anatomy composes a smaller and smaller portion of the boards each year.

 

[DrThom]

If your school ever starts talking about adopting a "Team Based Learning" portion of the curriculum.....fight it tooth and nail because it is the bane of my existance here at Wake.

 

[dilated]

They all suck equally. I spend most of my PBL time beating my head against the wall and thinking about how I could use that 2 hours to study (covering the PBL material in about 10 minutes) and then be able to go out tomorrow instead.