Problem-Based Learning: A Waste of Time?

[gravenewworld]

Who came up with this idea? It's a huge waste of time and I learn very little in our PBL sessions. I can't believe I have to waste time everyday with this crap. Some idiot wishy well do gooders probably thought up this 'teaching' method, when it is nothing more than a fad that should die off. ANyone else have to do PBL?

Most of the kids just wiki search, google, or do a quick pubmed and copy and paste. PBLs seem like it is a way for educators to do less teaching while charging the same amount of tuition dollars.

The worst is when you have a team member that has 20 pages of notes and wants to lecture for half an hour using a ridiculous power point presentation on just a single problem because they're are a massive overachiever.

 

[lisab]

Is this that system where the kids are expected to re-invent the wheel every time they try to learn something?

 

[gravenewworld]

Is this that system where the kids are expected to re-invent the wheel every time they try to learn something?

Pretty much. You are given a topic, problem, or disease and have to figure our what it is as a team and present on your results. All it does is turn into a quick google search and a copy and paste fest to some power point slides. Of course when there are multiple parts to the problem and we split the questions up so that each person gets one, the over achiever in the group has to turn what is supposed to be a 10 minute presentation into a 25 minute, 35 slide power point presentation just because they want to wow the professors when the question they are supposed to be answering should only take 2 minutes. What a huge waste of time.

This image is pretty funny but oh so true:

 

[ArcanaNoir]

I, for one, very much dislike having to "discover" things when that discovery is long and drawn out and results in a theorem that is fundamental to the material. I don't mind "side trips" in the problems sections that point to cool conclusions, but I had one book where entire chapters were devoted to "discovery" of fundamental properties. Like, let's spend a whole chapter "discovering" how to multiply a matrix, or find a determinant, or something really primary like that. I found it severely limited the amount of material we were able to cover. boo.

 

[gravenewworld]

Team based learning The Office style. Quite a funny vid because it is too true:

 

[lisab]

I, for one, very much dislike having to "discover" things when that discovery is long and drawn out and results in a theorem that is fundamental to the material. I don't mind "side trips" in the problems sections that point to cool conclusions, but I had one book where entire chapters were devoted to "discovery" of fundamental properties. Like, let's spend a whole chapter "discovering" how to multiply a matrix, or find a determinant, or something really primary like that. I found it severely limited the amount of material we were able to cover. boo.

Ugh, that sounds horrible.