Kevin's Minute Paper

Duch, Barbara. "Emphasizing the Problem in PBL." PBL Clearinghouse. https://www.mis4.udel.edu/Pbl/getPage?id=/33823439836/article.html.

This article contains a very concise statement of the characteristics of a good problem:

1. An effective problem must first engage students' interest, and motivate them to probe for deeper understanding of the concepts being introduced. It should relate the subject matter to the real world as much as possible.
2. Problems that work well sometimes require students to make decisions or judgments based on facts, information, logic and/or rationalization.
3. The problem should be complex enough that cooperation from all members of the student group will be necessary in order for them to effectively work towards a solution.
4. The initial questions in the first stage of a problem should be open-ended, based on previously learned knowledge, and/or be controversial so that all students in the groups are initially drawn into a discussion of the topic.
5. The content objectives of the course should be incorporated into the problems, connecting previous knowledge to new concepts, and connecting new knowledge to concepts in other courses and/or disciplines.

And then offers steps for writing a good problem:

1. Choose a central idea, concept or principle that is always taught in a given course, and then think of a typical end-of-chapter problem, assignment, or homework that is usually assigned to students to help them learn that concept. List the learning objectives that students should meet when they work through the problem.
2. Think of a real-world context for the concept under consideration. Develop a story-telling aspect to an end-of-chapter problem or research an actual case that can be adapted, adding some motivation for students to solve the problem. A complex, ill-structured problem will challenge students to go beyond simple "plug-and-chug" in order to solve it. Look at magazines, newspapers, and articles for ideas on the "story-line".
3. The problem needs to be introduced and staged so that students will be able to identify learning issues that will lead them to appropriate research throughout solving the problem.
4. Write a teacher guide detailing the instructional plans on using the problem in the course. The teacher guide can indicate plans or options of cycling through the pages of the problem interspersing the various modes of learning.
5. The final step is to identify resources for students. Students need to learn to identify and utilize learning resources on their own, but it can be helpful if the instructor indicates a few good sources to get them started. Many students today will want to limit their research to the internet, and so it will be important to guide them toward the library as well.

I cut and pasted, rather than summarized (although I did do considerable cutting), because I think this document will be one I keep coming back to over and over. It is essentially the same material presented at the last PBL luncheon of the year.

The challenge that instructors of writing face is that we often don’t have a content to our courses, or if we bring a specific content to the course, it will often seem arbitrary and idiosyncratic. That can open the class up--students can explore topics of interest to them--but that in turn makes it more difficult to manage a PBL course. The instructor cannot possibly help all students identify the right place to start their research, and the research itself starts to get broken down into individual interests.

I’m thinking about making "writing" the subject of my writing course, and the problem will be "how should we teach writing in the digital age"? (or maybe better—what do you need to know to survive as a student in the digital age?) I need to work on the story telling/real world component, but this essay has me thinking about this:

#4 is something else I will need to do a better job with—my instructional goals are often a little fuzzy, even to me.

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