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Problembased learning at Franklin College

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Title: Problembased learning at Franklin College


1
Problem-based learning at Franklin College
  • Brack W. Hale
  • Sara Steinert-Borella
  • Caroline Wiedmer

2
Problem-based learning (PBL) overview
  • Experience in the sciences
  • Background on PBL
  • PBL and Franklins new first-year program
  • PBL and Franklins core reform
  • PBL and Academic Integrity

3
  • Hazen (2002) discusses the reality of scientific
    literacy in American society. His research has
    found statistics like fewer than ten percent of
    Harvard graduating seniors could explain why
    it's hotter in summer than in winter and has led
    him to the conclusion
  • Most colleges and universities have the same
    dirty little secret we are all turning out
    scientifically illiterate students who are
    incapable of understanding many of the
    important newspaper items published on the very
    day of their graduation.
  • Greenwald (2000) suggests asking the IPF
    questions
  • Why is this Interesting?
  • What is Puzzling?
  • What do we need to Find out?

4
Overview PBL in the sciences
  • Teaching in the sciences
  • Traditional vs. Active Teaching
  • Problem-based learning (PBL)
  • My experience with PBL

5
Scientific literacy
  • Ability to understand and think about scientific
    issues critically
  • Not necessarily facts, but also methods
  • Using science, not doing science (Hazen 2002)
  • Why?
  • Global Climate Change
  • Loss of biodiversity
  • Use of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs)

Source http//cires.colorado.edu/maurerj/scatter
ometry/cryosphere_importance.htm
6
Science Learning
  • What kind of classes were your undergraduate
    science courses?
  • Traditionally, lecture-format and cookie-cutter
    labs
  • Relies on passive learning
  • Focuses on learning facts
  • Not much thinking involved
  • Disadvantages
  • Low attention span,
  • Little context for knowledge

Source http//advance.uconn.edu/2006/060905/06090
509.htm
7
Active learning
  • Engage students in material
  • Requires student thinking
  • Types
  • Simple lecture techniques
  • Collaborative learning
  • Problem-based learning

8
Problem-based learning
  • Began in medical education in U.S.
  • Three features (Greenwald 2000)
  • Learning initiated with problem
  • Uses ill-structured problem
  • Instructor as metacognitive coach
  • Students responsible for own learning
  • Typically work in groups
  • Responsible to report learning

9
Steps in PBL
  • Encounter problem
  • Ask IPF questions
  • Prioritize and plan research
  • Investigate problem
  • Reiterate learning
  • Develop solutions, recommendations
  • Communicate results
  • Assessment (self, peer, group)
  • Sources Barrows 1986 Greenwald 2000 Barrett
    2005

10
Ill-structured example
  • An environmental monitoring team working with
    National Cane Toad Taskforce plans to release
    millions of non-native lavender bugs over the
    next two summers to try to control the spread of
    the cane toad into Western Australia. The cane
    toad was introduced into Australia in the 1930s
    to control insect pests on sugar cane crop.
    Although the pest control effort failed
    miserably, the toad populations spread like
    wildfire, first through the Northern Territories
    and Queensland, and now threatens Western
    Australia. For an amphibian, it has a broad
    environmental tolerance (including eutrophic
    waters and certain herbicides), eats most
    anything, reproduces prolifically, and produces a
    toxin throughout its life-cycle that kills most
    predators that try to eat it. The toxin also
    affects any organism that comes into contact with
    it, including humans and pets.
  • Native frog species avoid the lavender beetle, as
    it is poisonous. Cane toads however eat them and
    consequently die. Laboratory and field studies
    indicate that cane toad populations can be
    significantly reduced and possibly even
    eradicated through this method. If the lavender
    beetle fails, the cane toad will continue to
    devastate the unique biodiversity of Australia as
    it spreads across the continent, endangering
    crocodiles, dingos, and many snake species. Is
    the introduction of the lavender beetle into
    Western Australia a reasonable and promising plan
    to control the cane toad?
  • Adapted from Batzli et al. 2005

Photo source http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImageC
ane-toad.jpg
11
Using the ill-structured problem
  • The phrase invasive species is commonly in the
    news. How do we know that the cane toad is
    invasive?
  • What is the basis of the toads threat to
    Australias freshwater ecosystems?
  • What are the risks and benefits of releasing
    lavender beetles?
  • Are there other alternatives? Are they
    reasonable? good?
  • On what basis should the research team make its
    decision about the effectiveness of this
    biological control agent?
  • What information do you need and what basic
    assumptions would you need to make to estimate
    the impact of releasing the beetle into Western
    Australia?

12
Drawbacks of PBL
  • New style of learning
  • Students accustomed to spoon feeding
  • Need for disciplinary knowledge (e.g. for
    graduate school entrance exams)
  • Traditional style better for short-term factual
    knowledge
  • PBL students show better long-term retention and
    better self-sufficiency in their study skills
  • Quality of coaching important
  • Development of good problems
  • Sources Barrett 2005, personal experience

13
My experience with PBL
  • Grad school (UW-Madison)
  • Post-doc (Duke University)
  • Faculty (Franklin)

14
Grad School Training
  • UW Biocore Program
  • Extended honors sequence in biology
  • Program focused on innovative and active teaching
  • Emphasis on training teaching assistants
  • Thanks to Janet Batzli, Janet Branchaw, and
    Michelle Harris!
  • BIOC 324 Organismal Biology Lab
  • Students developed novel experiments for each
    unit
  • Defined problems themselves
  • Teachers role to facilitate, model,
    problem-solve, consult

Source B. Hale
15
Post-Doc Training
  • Core course for environmental sciences and policy
    major
  • Focused on modules (case-studies)
  • Pseudo PBL
  • First-year seminar on river conservation
  • Students actively lead and teach
  • Active introduction to research and libraries

Source B. Hale
16
Franklin and PBL
  • First year of teaching
  • Introduced PBL-based activities in biology,
    environmental sciences, and freshwater courses
  • Assessment needed
  • Outcome appears successful
  • Cane toad example
  • Students enjoyed activity
  • Demonstrated good understanding of invasive
    species issues
  • Upcoming
  • First-year seminar on climate change
  • New core???
  • New environmental studies major

17
Problem-Based Learning and First Year Experience
  • Sara Steinert Borella

18
Why First Year Experience?
  • Desire to improve students experience in first
    year
  • Foundation for core and curriculum reform
  • Introduce problem and experiential-based learning
    across the disciplines

19
Introducing Crossing Borders, an Integrated First
Year Experience
  • New student orientation
  • First Year seminars
  • Co-curricular activities
  • Residential life programming
  • Academic Advising
  • Academic support services (Library, IT Services
    and Writing Center)
  • Mentoring role for upper-division and honors
    students

20
Why Crossing Borders?
  • The components woven together to provide a
    unified experience that introduces students
    toand helps createa challenging and purposeful
    multi-cultural and international academic
    learning environment.

21
Program Goals
  • Provide a first-year experience that meets
    students expectations for a multicultural,
    international learning experience
  • Engage students in a systematic learning program
    which connects the first year seminar with other
    aspects of their first year experience
  • Facilitate student academic success and increase
    student learning in the first-year
  • Provide students with meaningful opportunities to
    create and maintain relationships with members of
    the FC community

22
Program Goals(cont.)
  • Create a safe and supportive multicultural
    learning environment for first-year students in
    which they can make discoveries regarding
    personal values, identity and international
    attitudes.
  • Improve student retention in and after the
    first-year.
  • Assist students in becoming familiar and
    comfortable with the networks of support across
    campus.
  • Introduce students to local, regional and
    national resources.

23
Academic Support Service
  • Students become acquainted with learning
    resources through integrated, embedded
    assignments
  • Library
  • Information Technology
  • Writing Center
  • Tutoring

24
Examples of First-Year SeminarsFall 2007
  • Brack Hale Where have all the glaciers gone?
    Climate Change and the Alps
  • Caroline Wiedmer On the Road Portrayal of
    Travel on Screen
  • Sara Steinert Borella On the Road, Too Women
    Travel Writers in the 20th and 21st Centuries

25
On the Road, Too Women Travel Writers in the
20th and 21st Centuries
  • Embedded assignments
  • Library biographies, bibliographies, and finding
    sources
  • Writing Center
  • IT using IQ Web

26
Climate change seminar
  • Course to be centered around problems
  • Initiate learning in climatology, climate
    history, interactions between climate and
    ecology, biodiversity, ecosystem functioning,
    energy, economics
  • Based on current controversies
  • Use of academic mentor as coach 2
  • Embedded assignments to engage
  • Use of library
  • Use of Writing Center
  • Use of IT staff

27
Importance of First Year
  • Lays groundwork for core reform
  • Students ready for PBL
  • Makes PBL and associated skills part of campus
    culture
  • Improves students satisfaction and performance

28
Core Matters
  • Problem-Based Learning as an Approach to Core
    Reform
  • Caroline Wiedmer
  • Franklin College Switzerland

29
Current Core at Franklin
  • SEM 100 Contemporary Issues and the Classics
  • ENG 100 Writing in the Humanities
  • HIS 100 and HIS 101 Western Civilization, I and
    II or HIS 104 and HIS 105 World History, I and II
  • FRE/GER/ITA/SPA through 301 level (6 semesters)
  • Computer course
  • Three courses in Math/Science (must have one of
    each)
  • Social Science Course
  • Art History or Studio Art or Music course
  • Based heavily upon knowledge acquisition from
    traditional disciplines

30
Basic questions
  • What do we mean when we refer to knowledge?
  • How does knowledge tie in with subject position?
  • How can we harness the subject position of
    students, professors and the place of learning?

31
Shifts in concepts of knowledge
  • The influence of post-modernist and
    post-structuralist debates, coupled with feminist
    and postcolonial epistemologies have shaken the
    notion of objectivity in the scientific
    processes, and knowledge is no longer seen
    exclusively in cognitive terms, but also in terms
    of aesthetic and moral judgment, leading to a
    legitimization of aesthetic and interpretive and
    ethical categories of knowing. (Habermas, 1985,
    Putnam, 1987, Lenk, 1986, Weil, 2003).
  • ? Knowledge not as fact-oriented as it used to be

32
Subject position
  • Understanding knowledge as inherently bound up
    with subject position has had profound
    implications for the importance of understanding
    the culturality of knowledge of understanding
    that learning is bound up not only with the
    places and cultures from which students and
    professors hail--because they are indicators of
    normative dispositions--but also with the place
    in which knowledge is produced (Stephen
    Greenblatt, 1994).
  • ? Your background and location influence
    knowledge

33
Place and the importance of learning
  • Indeed the cultural dispositions of the teacher
    and the student are, to paraphrase Hans Weiler,
    constitutive elements in the processes of
    knowledge creation that have a decisive impact on
    the way problems are perceived and taught.
  • Cultural location poses both a great challenge,
    and a great opportunity for international,
    overseas colleges like Franklin.

34
Basic Questions (2)
  • How do we, as teachers and scholars, take the
    fullest advantage of the multifaceted
    perspectives and experiences offered by our
    diverse student-body?
  • How do we prepare students to operate in a world
    in which they will be required to recognize,
    analyze and find solutions to multifaceted, often
    ill-defined problems?

35
Problem-based learning?
  • Problems on the local and the global level
    present themselves not in neatly prepackaged
    categories, sorted according to discipline, but
    rather as murky, ill-defined and ever-shifting
    complexes that manifest on a number of personal,
    societal and global levels.

36
Why problem-based learning?
  • Learning and teaching, which is based not on
    disciplinary learning but is problem or
    topic-based allows for a contemplation of
    attitudes and presuppositions based on personal
    experience, and cultural positionality of
    students and professors.
  • Understanding how problems are constituted
    differently in different places, and are solved
    differently in different places gives insight
    into transcultural processes.

37
New Core Strategy
  • across disciplines, enabling students to deploy
    methods and theories from a number of disciplines
    apply them to the topic at hand
  • across cultures, enabling students to understand
    how their particular subject positiontheir
    normative training, their presuppositions about
    the world, and the context within which a problem
    presents itself interacts with their solutions to
    the problem.

38
Potential new model
  • Model consists of interdisciplinary, team-taught
    and problem-based learning communities
  • Communities integrate travel, language, skills
    and interdisciplinary learning
  • Communities focus problem/theme with real-world
    relevance.
  • Topics take advantage of FCs international
    character
  • Diversity of student and faculty
  • Setting
  • Travel program as live laboratory
  • Model emphasizes collaborative learning in and
    outside of the traditional class room.

39
Learning Communities
  • These topics to be organized under five or six
    different problems/themes, such as
  • Globalization
  • Wealth and Poverty
  • The Aesthetic World
  • Past, Present and Future
  • The Environment
  • Technology and Society
  • NB Topics reassessed/updated periodically

40
Sample Configuration
41
Other aspects
  • Core should also integrate skill acquisition
  • Writing
  • IT competency
  • Research
  • Quantitative
  • Current thinking is to embed in courses ( first
    year seminar)

42
PBL and Academic Integrity
43
Academic Integrity
  • What is academic integrity?
  • Class attendance
  • Class participation
  • Work appropriately on projects
  • Contributing to group effort
  • Following research protocols
  • Appropriately citing sources
  • Performance on exams and other evaluations
  • i.e. no cheating

44
PBL and Integrity
  • Class time
  • Attendance important
  • Participation inevitable
  • Community responsibility
  • Group work
  • Group assessments
  • Responsibility
  • Presentations
  • Exams
  • Butno easy answers

45
Take home messages
  • PBL provides real world experience and skills
  • Alternative model to classic education
  • Franklins new core
  • PBL restructures learning environment
  • Develops learning communities
  • Probably improves integrity
  • PBL requires better collaboration across faculty
    and other learning staff (i.e. library, IT,
    academic skills)
  • Faculty dont have to be ruggedly independent
  • Time is key resource

46
Thanks to
  • Susan Perry
  • The Mellon Foundation
  • AMICAL
  • AUI

47
Questions?
  • Partial References
  • Barrett, T. 2005. What is problem-based
    learning? IN Emerging Issues in the Practice of
    University Learning and Teaching. ONeill, G.,
    Moore, S., McMullin, B. (Eds). Dublin AISHE.
  • Barrows, H. 1986. A taxonomy of problem-based
    learning methods. Medical Education, 20 481-486.
  • Batzli, J., Ebert-May, D., Hodder, J. 2005.
    Bridging the pathway from instruction to
    research. Frontiers in Ecology and the
    Environment, 4105-107.
  • Greenwald, N. 2000. Learning from problems. The
    Science Teacher, 6728-32.
  • Hazen, R. 2002. Why should you be scientifically
    literate? ActionBioscience.org.
    http//www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/hazen
    .html
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