Problem-based learning at
Franklin College
Brack W. Hale
Sara Steinert-Borella
Caroline Wiedmer
Problem-based learning (PBL)
overview

Experience in the sciences
Background on PBL
PBL and Franklin’s new first-year program
 PBL and Franklin’s core reform
 PBL and Academic Integrity

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?
Overview: PBL in the sciences
Teaching in the sciences
 Traditional vs. Active Teaching

Problem-based learning (PBL)

My experience with PBL
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
(GMO’s)
Source:
http://cires.colorado.edu/~maurerj/scatterometry/cryosphere_importance.htm
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/2006/060905/06090509.htm
Active learning
Engage students in material
 Requires student thinking
 Types:

Simple lecture techniques
Collaborative learning
Problem-based learning
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
Steps in PBL
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
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
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 1930’s 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/Image:Cane-toad.jpg
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 toad’s threat to Australia’s
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?

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
My experience with PBL
Grad school (UW-Madison)
 Post-doc (Duke University)
 Faculty (Franklin)

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, problemsolve, consult
Source: B. Hale
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
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
Problem-Based Learning and
First Year Experience
Sara Steinert Borella
Why First Year Experience?



Desire to improve student’s experience in
first year
Foundation for core and curriculum reform
Introduce problem and experiential-based
learning across the disciplines
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






Why Crossing Borders?
The components woven together to provide a
unified experience that introduces students
to—and helps create—a challenging and
purposeful multi-cultural and international
academic learning environment.
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

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.
Academic Support Service
Students become acquainted with learning resources
through integrated, embedded assignments:
 Library
 Information Technology
 Writing Center
 Tutoring
Examples of First-Year Seminars:
Fall 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
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
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
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

Core Matters
Problem-Based Learning as an
Approach to Core Reform
Caroline Wiedmer
Franklin College Switzerland
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
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?

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
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”
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.
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?
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.
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.

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 position—their normative training,
their presuppositions about the world, and the context
within which a problem presents itself interacts with their
solutions to the problem.
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 FC’s 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.
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
Sample Configuration
Globalization
and its Effects
CLCS 330
Politics of
Movement:
Exile and
Immigration
SCI 220
Perspectives on
Freshwater
Conservation
ECO 341
International
Economics
HIS 372
Histories
of Globalization
LIT 105
World
Literature
Other aspects

Core should also integrate skill acquisition:
Writing
IT competency
Research
Quantitative

Current thinking is to embed in courses (~ first
year seminar)
PBL and Academic Integrity
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
PBL and Integrity

Class time
Attendance important
Participation inevitable
Community responsibility

Group work
Group assessments
Responsibility
 Presentations
 Exams

But…no easy answers
Take home messages

PBL provides real world experience and skills
 Alternative model to classic education
 Franklin’s 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 don’t have to be “ruggedly independent”
 Time is key resource
Thanks to:
Susan Perry
The Mellon Foundation
AMICAL
AUI
Questions?
Partial References
Barrett, T. 2005. What is problem-based learning? IN: Emerging Issues in the Practice of
University Learning and Teaching. O’Neill, 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, 4:105-107.
Greenwald, N. 2000. Learning from problems. The Science Teacher, 67:28-32.
Hazen, R. 2002. Why should you be scientifically literate? ActionBioscience.org.
http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/hazen.html