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?

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Overview PBL in the sciences

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

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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
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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

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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

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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

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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
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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?

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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

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My experience with PBL

• Grad school (UW-Madison)
• Post-doc (Duke University)
• Faculty (Franklin)

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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
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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

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Problem-Based Learning and First Year Experience

• Sara Steinert Borella

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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Academic Support Service

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Core Matters

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

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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

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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?

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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

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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

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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Sample Configuration
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Other aspects

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

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PBL and Academic Integrity
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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

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PBL and Integrity

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

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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

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Thanks to

• Susan Perry
• The Mellon Foundation
• AMICAL
• AUI

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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