After defining the situation, problem analysis begins. One tool in the PBCL toolbox is the Need to Know Board. In the following video, Jack Wallace illustrates how he works with a Need to Know Board, helping teams of students explore facts, assumptions, questions, and resources as they form hypotheses about the underlying problem.
Please review the following video on Problem Analysis and Field Insights:
As mentioned above, an important tool in problem based case based learning is the Need to Know Board (NTKB). This tool helps students organize their thinking into different columns for facts, assumptions, questions, and resources. Usually, a NTKB is process of days sometimes weeks and changes over time. As the teams research the problem, the NTKB will morph and transform. Sometimes faculty members require a NTKB to be turned in every week so you can see the changes.
The following instructions are included on the second page of the NTKB template, which is available online in the Tools and Resources section of the Making Learning Real web site. It provides a description of the information that should be included in each column.
Following is an example of how the NTKB could be filled out by a member of the IDEO design team.
Teams of students perform research and conduct interviews to hep them understand the problem and gain multiple perspectives. Students search out experts and users to interview to help them understand the problem. Multiple perspectives are important to learn about the problem from different perspectives.
