A Medical School Model
At the University of Delaware, professor Harold B. White III wants his students to learnhow to solve scientific problems in a new way—actively and collaboratively.
Photo: Paul Fetters
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While PBL may be new to undergraduate science students, the method has been around for some time. The first courses were developed some 30 years ago at several medical schools, led by McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.
"Medical students were going into these large lecture halls where a series of physician-educators would march through every two weeks, tell everything they knew, and expect the students to assimilate it all and regurgitate it on an exam. It was very deadening," says Harold B. White III, a University of Delaware professor of chemistry and biochemistry and program director for HHMI's grant there.
Several medical schools, trying a new approach, built a curriculum around interesting medical case studies, White says. Groups of students guided by a physician/tutor analyzed each case study, trying to unravel symptoms and other clues to determine what was wrong with the patient and what the proper treatment might be. Along the way, the students found themselves learning physiology, anatomy, pharmacology and more.
"The problem essentially came first, and the student's learning was driven by wanting to know more," says White. This reversed conventional instruction, he points out. "Normally, you start with a textbook; you give all the theories and concepts and then you do the problem," he says. "Very often students don't see the relevance of what you're doing."
White and other UD science professors became interested in PBL methods after attending a workshop about seven years ago on medical schools' experiences. "Several of us had an epiphany of sorts," he says. "We said, 'Wow, this is what's missing in undergraduate education as well!'"
A National Science Foundation grant helped them introduce problem-based learning in UD's introductory undergraduate science courses in January 1994. Other grants, including HHMI's, enabled them to expand the program to include student tutor–facilitators in PBL classrooms.
