Vol. 19, No. 17

Jan. 27, 2000

PBL conference attracts
international educators

Educators from around the globe converged on the UD campus earlier this month for the Winter Institute sponsored by the Institute for Transforming Under graduate Education. Held Jan 10-14, the institute gave participants a chance to gain first-hand experience and to share ideas about the concept of problem-based learning (PBL). “The University of Delaware has an international reputation for applying innovative undergraduate teaching techniques in a university setting that few research universities have been able to attain,” participant James Smith Allen, director of University Core Curriculum and professor of history at Southern Illinois University, said. “The programs here are recognized internationally. They’ve had tremendous success in obtaining grants from the National Science Foundation, the Pew Trust and the Hewlett Foundation–grants that you just don’t get off trees. “UD is very competitive when it comes to educational reform and a source of tremendous envy among other institutions,” he said. Thirty eight UD faculty participated in the institute along with 23 visiting fellows from local school districts, other states and countries. Ed Deckard, professor of plant sciences at North Dakota State University, said he had investigated PBL programs elsewhere but “really identified UD as the place with the most significant leadership in the field.” Paul J. Kuerbis, professor and director of the Crown Tapper Teaching and Learning Center at Colorado College, said he had benefited from “the very specific strategy we were shown to construct problems and introduce them.” He said he plans to recommend one of the sample problems participants worked on during the institute for inclusion in the freshman experience program at Colorado College. One of a team of six representing the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, Vincent Wertz of the Center for Systems Engineering and Applied Mechanics, said his institution is in the process of reforming its engineering curriculum and looking for different models of active learning. “One of the things that attracted us to UD is that here there is no single religion of PBL. The program makes allowances for size of class and types of students, and we were not taught religiously about a single model. We heard about various experiences, the approach is loose here, flexible,” he said. At Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Allen said professors have been interested in adapting the medical school model of problem-based learning to undergraduates. “What worries us about this reform is that even though it has worked wonders with medical students, it has never applied to undergraduates and the med school model is rigid. It points out the difficulty of educational reform at a research institution. “UD, however, has managed to find a balance between teaching and research through PBL,” he said. Wertz added that sessions on how to assess students and how to assess objectives that need to be achieved also were helpful. “We got good practice this week in really good practical things. Educational reform is a difficult issue: It’s one thing to introduce it, it’s another to be able to change your assessment policies and make them match the grading system.” Doug Kurtze, profess or physics at North Dakota Sate University, said he appreciated being able “to tap into the expertise that’s developed at UD on getting groups to work.” He said he would be initiating his first PBL course just two days after returning from the institute. Allen added that sessions on strategies to use in introducing PBL to students and administrators were helpful, and all participants said working together to solve a PBL problem on the water quality of the Colorado River had been inspiring. They added that it is important to make contact with others who support PBL and said they planned to contribute PBL sample problems to a database that soon will be established at UD. The database on the web will serve as a clearinghouse of PBL examples published for all interested to see. –Beth Thomas