TWO YEARS WITH PROBLEM BASED LEARNING

Luis Bretel Pontificia Universidad Catlica del Per

Many college professors have, at some point or another, said about their students things such as: They only want to get grades to pass the course, and are not inclined to go beyond the necessary minimum. They dont have the knowledge foundations necessary for learning. They are passive, uncritical and non-analytical students. They are only concerned about immediate things. They cant solve complex problems. They dont look for more information than they receive in class, nor do they utilize more books than their text book. They dont keep a steady work schedule, nor are they capable of studying on their own. They dont know how to work in groups, and they have difficulty communicating ideas. They memorize information without comprehending it. These comments are not only frequent, but also revelatory of a very particular and non-self-critical perspective. Many college professors think that the difficulties, limitations and failures of Higher Education reside in the students; not in the curriculum, the courses, the course materials, the educational methods, and certainly not in the educators. Such is the gaze that looks, but does not see, and therefore cannot improve its sight. Nevertheless, to the benefit of our Institution, there are also professors that dare to turn their gaze and ask themselves: Could it be that I have to change first? Could it be that what I do and how I do it is contributing or even causing such student behavior? It is only when professors dare to cast their gaze upon their own style of teaching, upon their own materials, and their own forms of assessment, that change is initiated.

This was the case, in August 2000, when a small group of professors from the Pontificia Universidad Catlica del Per (PUCP) decided to stop complaining about their students and cede the throne to them assuming the challenge to reach their students. The Pedagogical Modernization Commission at the Catholic University accompanied them in their search and journey. Together, in the process of inquiry and discussion about the best ways to promote learning in higher education, they encountered Problem-Based Learning (PBL). The first approximation with the PBL concept given in our university showed that this method had the potential to illuminate us the path to follow. This gave rise to the possibility of performing experiments throughout the second academic semester of 2000 and in January and February of 2001. These initial experiments spawned results more than positive; they excited the Academic Director of General Studies (or Liberal Arts) in the Humanities department, who assembled a group of professors, some of which had participated in the previous experiments. He proposed that they should redesign their courses in a PBL format. The pioneers were the professors Carla Barrionuevo, Carla Sagstegui, Ulla Holmquist, Renzo Roncagliolo and the very Academic Director of General Studies, Ciro Alegra. From then on and for four consecutive semesters, PBL courses were implemented in the General Studies program. After four semesters of implementation, there are now 16 professors who have redesigned their courses. Some of the PBL courses that have been completely redesigned are: Topics in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Composition and Argumentation, Narrative, Prehistory and Civilization, Geography, Social Communication, 17th Century Peruvian History, Mathematics 1, Ecology and Cosmology. During these years, 1190 students have participated in these PBL courses, 181 of them have taken two or three PBL courses, and 7 of them have taken four or more. In the following lines, I will present the results of the research that was conducted regarding students who took two or more PBL courses. All the students that took four or more PBL courses were personally interviewed, and 37% of those that took 2 or 3 were given a survey of open questions1.

We decided to exclude from our study those students who have taken only one PBL course because we believe that they wouldnt have enough evidence and experience to allows them to compare between PBL and more traditional methodologies.

EFFECTS OF PBL 1. PBL FACILITATES THE COMPREHENSION OF NEW KNOWLEDGE

This, as will as the following quotes, reproduce the students opinions on PBL courses: In courses like [non-PBL courses] the professor comes in, speaks, copies notes onto the board and is looked at; comes in, speaks, copies and is looked at, and then comes the day of the exam. 2

David Ausubel (1976) sustained that if students can establish substantial and not arbitrary connections between incoming information and what they already know, based on previous experiences and learning, they will have guaranteed not only the comprehension of that incoming information, but also the significance of learning. Thus, what one learns significatively one memorizes in a singnificant way. This is definitely not a process of mechanical memorization. When learning is significant, memorization is guaranteed because what is learned has been integrated into the learners cognitive structure. We dont believe that there is a professor who does not wish that their students acquire this type of learning. However, in contrast to the courses where professors lecture predominates, in the PBL format it is the students exploration that prevails: In lecture formatsyou study with what youve copied and read, and thats it. [...] I dont like it, its like putting all the lectures on the table and having to learn them. I dont like it! However, in PBL courses you get into what you read, with your notes, with your work, with what you discussed with your professor. She told me this, I understood this, I probably understood this from the practical side of it... (JDF) From the remarks, of the students who have gone through the PBL experience, it is evident that listening and reading are not enough for the comprehensive production of significant learning and of learning with understanding. Definitively, this does not only guarantee a greater quality in learning; it also allows learning to be turned into easy work. Not only because the student does not have to discover the logic and the relations of the contents in the professors mind, but because it is the student who begins to construct that
2

This is a quote from one of the student's interviews. In the following, all the citations at the beginning of each section correspond to students coments during the interviews.

logic in a personal and meaningful process of inquiry. This means that the professor shall create or design the path that will be followed by the students. In this sense, we are dealing with a dialectic in which, through inquiry the discussion is conducted by the very act of learning. The professor no longer transmits information through expositions, but instead, assists in its discovery. As the students say: PBL courses allowed us to get deeper into our study topics, cause you actively participate in learning. (RVH) ...they helped us draw our own conclusions, and thats what we learned to do, as much in theory as in practice. (Anonymous survey) Of the topics covered in the courses that Ive taken, those that stay the freshest in my memory are the PBL ones (Anonymous survey). All of this allow us to understand why the majority of the interviewed students think that in their PBL courses they learn more (59%), while less than one fifth think that they learn the same in whichever course format (16%) and a small percentage states that they learn more in lectures (8%). How was such learning achieved in PBL courses? Its clear that in the PBL process, students not only receive information, but are obligated to analyze it, to compare it with their prior knowledge; to organize and synthesize a great amount of information, in order to construct new and richer cognitive structures. Thus, information is gotten into, it is penetrated gradually by personal thought structures. However, for such a constructive process to be possible, it is not enough to provide only a carefully designed path; it is indispensable to guarantee that students are willing and motivated to be constructively critical.

2. PBL COURSES INCREASE STUDENTS MOTIVATION AND PROMOTE AN AFFECTIVE DISPOSITION

... in PBL courses youre given the push that you need to take the courses that you dont like. (RC)

Given the complexity of cognitive processes involved in significant learning, David Ausubel (1976) considers that one of the teachers main missions is to guarantee that sufficient volitional and affective mobilization is produced on their students. The levels of achieved motivation in PBL courses are clearly the necessary ones, as a student said:In

Cosmology, in which the whole world flunks the theoretical section, Ive told them to take it PBL, that theyll learn tons, that theyll have a blast and actually pass it. (MPD)

In addition, without going into the discussion of the differences of the types of motivation -intrinsic and extrinsic-, it is important to mention our belief that better results are always attained when an adequate combination of the two is achieved (Covington, 2000). It was this very positive balance that was achieved in the PBL courses, as an other student said: ...Math, Cosmology, Philosophy, were all courses that I didnt like. [...] PBL made the difference that I could pass them and come to like them, I mean, I came to understand them better. (RC) However, motivation is not only important in the initial phase of the learning process. On the contrary, it must be continuous throughout the entire process. With regard to learning with understanding, non-comprehension does not only produce mechanical learning; it discourages students, because it makes them feel ineffective and held back from learning, not leaving them any other alternative than to mechanically and obligatorily fill in their minds with something that they just do not understand. This has been very clearly perceived and pointed out by the students: [PBL courses] generate more enthusiasm because the student has more control over the topics at hand. (RVH) How was motivation achieved in PBL courses? The analysis of the student commentaries makes us think that the high levels of motivation, which were achieved in PBL courses, have been reached by three fundamental factors: The type of attention offered by the professors and teaching assistants, the nature of the proposed problems or projects and the assessment system implemented. What is extraordinary about PBL courses is that the professor does not use the majority of class-time to lecture and explain, but rather to assist and accompany the students in their readings, discussions, and in the elaboration of their projects. In response to the question: In what type of course have you felt the most attention from the professor? 82% of the surveyed students answered PBL, and 16% said that it was the same in PBL as in non-PBL courses. Furthermore, 36% of those who said that they received more attention from their teachers in PBL courses state that the reason was that the group work allows the professor to attend to everyone. 20% said that the reason was because the teachers concern is that we all understand; and 13% because the professor is continuously supervising the work. The challenging nature of the proposed problems, in all the diversity of their formulations, more than just capturing the attention of the students, came to absorb them, made them feel useful, and allow them to simulate being professionals, researchers and scholars.

Also, in the survey, 78% of the students said that they preferred the assessment system of PBL courses, due to the following reasons: Because they assess your reasons and consistent work and not what you memorize in the last minute (37%). Because you are constantly pushed to study (36%). Because youre allowed to improve (11%). And because it promotes some students to teach others(8%). However, students producing significant learning are not enough; it is essential to guarantee the potential and logical significance of what will be learned. What is that, and how is it achieved in PBL?

3. PBL COURSES PROVOKE COGNITIVE CONFLICTS ...the work was a challenge for us. (JDF)

Of all the things Piaget proposed (1999), the one with greatest educational implications has been the idea of cognitive conflict. The most significant learning is undoubtedly produced in the search for the recuperation of lost equilibrium (homeostasis). As a student said: They ask you, for example, if it is possible to move matter with the mind; [...] and they dont give you an answer [...] youve got to deduce and arrive at the conclusion yourself of whether this is possible or not and to explain [...] You actually arrive by yourself to an answer thats not given in a book. (MPD) If our students do not find themselves in a situation of disequilibria, and if their cognitive structures do not encounter contradiction, they simply will not learn. Thus the cognitive conflict is not only solved by that affective motor; but also by the guarantee of the modified cognitive structures being observed. As student said: The PBL courses, when correctly planned out, allow learning beyond the reach of conventional courses. They very practically incorporate important problems and promote creativity (RVH). This was a very important principle in the design of the problems and in the processes of PBL courses. To the extent that if those cognitive conflicts were not produced students would hardly acquire new learning. A PBL course is a course of self-learning, of self-didactic. You get the knowledge (alone) and the professor only clears it up and solves your questions. (Anonymous Survey) Only the search for lost equilibrium can impel students to investigate and produce their own answers and knowledge, which are always qualitatively greater than mechanical answers.

4. IN PBL COURSES, STUDENTS ARE CREATORS OF ANSWERS; NOT REPRODUCERS OF THEM

There are millions of questions that dont have answers in books, but you think however, I take a little bit from here, a little something else from there, Im going to come to answer my question even though my book wont tell me it, [...] And thats what I learn to do in PBL courses. (MPD)

Significant learning implies necessarily reorganization, restructuring, accommodation or re-equilibration of cognitive structures (Piaget, 1999). How was a cognitive conflict achieved in PBL courses? Not only the type of problems that were treated, but also the manner in which they were presented produced such an effect. The problem was presented in such a way that it caused necessarily an initial imbalance. The process then maintained that quality of imbalance: neither the books, nor the professors answers gave a solution. The students had to find their own answers by themselves. In order to solve those conflicts, students had to keep being motivated, to investigate, to compare and contrast opinions, data and diverse conclusions. PBL permanently impels students to formulate questions about what they need to know and about the ways they should get information about those questions, the so-called learning issues. To ask and to learn to ask are essentials to learn and to foster analytical thinking skills. Students research is constructed based on a continuum of questions, which give direction and sense as a result of their being formulated, of being elaborated. Overall, the goal of learning is to find the meaning of our search for knowledge. This is the objective of higher education: To produce researchers, and not parrots. It seems to me that when Im almost autodidactic Im more interested and fix my attention better on the course topics. (Anonymous Survey) However, this process of production of knowledge was not a solitary and individual process.

5. IN PBL, LEARNING FUNDAMENTALLY RESULTS FROM COLLABORATION AND COOPERATION

Group work permits the interaction of multiple points of view that end up being more efficient with the professors adequate guiding. (Anonymous Survey)

Learning is a social activity. It is a result of communicative interaction with peers or those who are more experienced (Vygotsky, 1986). Learning is more efficient when the learner shares ideas with other learners, and when everyone cooperates to find the solution of a problem. Rather than a dictator who imposes his or her own objectives, a fundamental role of professors is to encourage the dialogue among students, helping them to negotiate meanings, and to act more as team players. Whats important is that while the professor might be over there, hes assessing you, that is hes always helping you (RC). Such retreatment radically carried through the PBL courses, far from minimizing the role of the educators, makes them more responsible for the students learning process than if they were mere dictators, whose work would end with delivery of information and not with the students real and significant learning. In a lecture hall, when there are 80 people, the professor talks and talks and only those that are big question-askers go up front at the end of the class to ask about something. Whereas in PBL courses, everyone asks questions, because [...] its easier [...] the professor is more frequently approached...(LC) Knowledge is first constructed outside, in an inter-psychological relationship (Vygotsky, 1986). Then, it occurs in an intra-psychological manner, when internalization is produced. This fundamental sense, of internalization, consists of the interior reconstruction of the external operation, and therefore, from the very beginning it is always a social function. That is why students value discussion in PBL courses more than the passive reception of information. Students prefer uncertainty over certainty; conversation with their peers over listening to their professor; cooperation instead of an asymmetric relationship with their professors. On the survey, when students were asked if in class they preferred to listen to the lecture of the professor over group work: 54% affirmed that they preferred group work and discussion; 16% that both if there was a preeminence of the group discussion; and 16% preferred a combination of the two. I feel that I learn more, when I interact with a group... (JDF)

Our investigation has allowed us to discover not only what was postulated by Vygotsky, concerning the social nature of learning, which was experimentally observed in PBL courses, but also that it is fundamental for the mediating intervention of the professor (Vygotsky, 1979). The same maybe said, with respect to Vygotskys fundamental concept of the zone of proximal development:...I understood more. I understood much better by sharing ideas [...] oh yeah, yes now I understand it better. We make a summary together with our own words and each of the students has his or her own summary. Thats what I like. (JA) The zone of proximal development consists of the imaginary distance between the actual level of development (capacity to independently resolve a problem) and the level of potential development (resolution of a problem, but with the intervention and guidance of someone more capable, more able or with more vision). ...to study in a group is easier [...] because you feel sure [...] At the moment of having doubts, Im with my group. If I dont understand something maybe these people can tell me what it means, or its like Im already learning. [...] Whereas in normal courses this is not the case, because you enter, the professor enters and you dont even have the time to say hello to him. (JDF) Furthermore, PBL develops integral and holistic learning processes in higher education. PBL permits the simultaneous and harmonious activation of different intellectual capacities and abilities, assuming in this way the challenge proposed by Howard Gardner (1987).

6. PBL COURSES PROMOTE HARMONIC INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT

Intelligence is not a stable, measurable or quantifiable substance, but rather a cluster of potentialities that develop, which permit the resolution of unanticipated problems, the generation of new problems and the flexible creation of products (Gardner, 1987). The problems that allow us to demonstrate true capacities and potentialities of learning are not artificial. This implies that it is only through the confrontation of students with real problems, with the possibility to generate new problems, or with the creation of products, that we can guarantee that their capacities are put into action and are being developed. PBL courses promote the development of cognitive capabilities upon facing a series of investigations, interpretations and elections of the necessary information to set in stone a final draft. (Anonymous Survey)

7. BUT, NOT EVERYTHING IS PERFECT

However, not everything is perfect. In these PBL experiences we had some difficulties and some aspects students didnt like. These aspects were related to PBLs-implementation, not to PBL-method. What the majority of students liked the most about PBL courses was the evaluation system, but the implementation was different within the group of courses. The only negative aspect that the students found in some classes was that " you didnt have control on the grade. For example, in Geography, I didnt know what my grade was until the day after the final exam [] in Social Communication I never knew what my grade was [] the same happened in Pre-history course" (J.D.F.) On the other hand, many students thought that PBL classes demanded more time and much more class work than other classes "because in a normal course you go to classes, you read and study everything by yourself, then you sit the exam and pass it. There is no class work. There are many students that dont go to classes, they read what is in the syllabus or go a week after the end of the class to the teacher and ask him: What can I read for the exam? They read it, take the exam and they pass it. However in PBL courses each week is important, you cant miss a class, you have to go to every hour" (L.C.) In many PBL classes the lecture is something you miss. Not necessarily because you expect that the teacher is the only one who speaks, but because the students believe that they need to know from the teachers mouth: Which are the rules of the game, what they have to do and what is the teachers opinion. Also because sometimes, students need to have an authority to reinforce what they have already discovered. "I believe that my preference for PBL courses is clear, nevertheless I believe that PBL courses should also include lectures" (R.V.H.). Some teachers were not careful in the implementation of the necessary mechanisms to assure that all the students would work in the same level, and that caused dislike in the students. "If you are in a good group you are lucky. But if you are in a group were nobody wants to work and everybody is just looking at everybodys face, it is terrible" (M.P.D.). Although teachers assure positive interdependency, there will be students that believe that they can do everything by themselves and who think that group-work is a waste of time.

IN CONCLUSION PBL implies a challenge to students, which they cannot solve only with what they know until that moment. Thus it becomes a motivator, a promoter of their need to learn, a generator of cognitive conflicts, a modifier of their cognitive structures and a guarantee of the significance of their learning. Moreover, it activates the zone of proximal development, and furthermore, it permits students to employ multiple forms of intuition and consciousness, of memory and reasoning. Everyone, according to his or her personality is going to be able to improve... (MPD). But, when implementing PBL courses we cannot forget that there are many variables to take into account to assure the best results. REFERENCES Ausubel, David. Psicologa educativa, un punto de vista cognoscitivo. Mxico D.F.: Trillas, 1976, p. 769. Barrows, Howard S. and Distlehorst, L.H. A new tool for problem-based self-directed learning. The Journal of Medical Education, 1982, 57 (6), pp. 486-488. Barrows, Howard S.. Problem-based learning in medicine and beyond: A brief overview. En Bringing problem-based learning to higher education: Theory and practice (L. Wikerson y W. Gijselaers, eds). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Inc., 1996, pp. 3-12. Boud, David and Feletti, Graham. The challenge of problem-based learning. Londres: Kogan Page, 1997, p. 344. Covington, Martin. La voluntad de aprender: Gua para la motivacin en el aula ( Celina Gonzlez, trad.). Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2000, p. 308. Duch, Barbara; Groh, Susan and Allen, Deborah. The power of problem-based learning. Virginia: Stylus Publishing, 2001, p. 274. Gardner, Howard. Estructuras de la mente: la teora de las mltiples inteligencias. Mxico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1987, p. 430. Piaget, Jean. Psicologa de la inteligencia. Madrid: Psique, 1999, p. 237. Valverde, Jess. El proceso de inadaptacin social. Madrid: Popular, 1988, p. 99. Vygotsky, Lev. Thought and language (Alex Kozulin, ed. and trans.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1986, p. 287. Vygotsky, Lev. Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, and E. E. Souberman, eds.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978, p. 176.