Making Learning Real with Problem-Based Case Learning

At least once during our Problem Bases Case Learning (PBCL) trainings, in either the ½ day orientation or 2-day design and development workshops, questions are raised regarding at what level of instruction can the PBCL strategy be implemented.  Is it only effective at the “capstone” level, or can it be implemented in entry-level classes as well?  Or in simpler language, how much prior knowledge do the students need to have before being able to effectively work in the PBCL environment?  And while our answer is that the PBCL strategy is a strategy that can be utilized at all levels of instruction, we have never actually defined a methodology that explains how this can be achieved.  In fact, it is this lack of definition that has limited my implementation of the PBCL strategy in my classes.  In the pages that follow, I am going to describe the process I used to move two of my classes to a fuller application of the PBCL strategy.

The PBCL strategy is predicated on the introduction of a business partner who presents a real world, unsolved business problem into the classroom.  The process follows the cycle shown in figure 1, and is a powerful teaching strategy for the following reasons.  First, the introduction of a business partner and the unsolved business problem create a context for learning wherein the students are able to achieve a high level of agency and independence in their learning process.  This opportunity exists because the students are put in a position where they must choose how they will solve the problems confronting them instead of being handed a recipe to follow.  Subsequently, this independence requires them to predict the outcomes of their actions, and then assess if those actions resulted in the desired results.

Second, this independence creates a need for the students to confront their preconceived notions regarding the “correct” way of doing something, in order to ascertain which of the multiple techniques available to them best fits the situation at hand.  Finally, the process requires the

Fig. 1

Second, this independence creates a need for the students to confront their preconceived notions regarding the “correct” way of doing something, in order to ascertain which of the multiple techniques available to them best fits the situation at hand.  Finally, the process requires the students to identify how they “see” the problems, then choose a path to take to solve those problems, and finally to assess the validity of those choices.  Taken together, these stages can give the student a practical way to develop a metacognitive process for approaching problem solving, which can results in a learning process that can lead to higher levels of understanding of the material, and to better transfer across disciplines.

All of the team members connected with the dissemination of the PBCL strategy have heard success stories from practitioners of PBCL, but for educators considering moving to the PBCL, the question stills remains as to how much prior knowledge a student needs before being put in a position to use the PBCL approach.  Since our primary consideration when choosing a teaching strategy must be making the material accessible to our students, it is fair to ask how beneficial it would be to introduce a business partner and unsolved business problem to a classroom of students who know nothing about the class material and who therefore have few or any preconceived notions other than that there is a right way and a wrong way to solve the problem.

I developed the curriculum for and teach both the introductory and advanced classes of Autodesk’s Revit, a 3D modeling software.  The subject matter for both classes are extremely “content heavy,” and requires the transmission of a considerable amount of “how to” information to the students, and it is this aspect of the classes that has kept me from fully implementing the PBCL strategy in these classes.  The best I have been able to do to date is use a hybrid version of the strategy in Revit II, by bringing a business partner into class on the first day to present a project to the class.  I then used this project to frame the course work for the rest of the semester.  In short, I limited my usage of the PBCL cycle to the first three stages, (Fig. 1).

This approach served me well, to a degree.  It gave the class a touchstone that allowed me to tie the lectures to a context that I could come back to again and again.  In the end though, the comments I kept hearing from the class were, “Why didn’t we start working with the partner earlier,” and “There wasn’t enough time for the final project.”

With Revit I, this class has always followed a traditional lecture/lab structure, with a large final project produced over the course of the last 5 weeks. The project was designed to allow the students revisit the lessons from the semester by recreated a design from a drawing package that I supplied to them.  During last summer’s session, I had an epiphany though.  As my class progressed through the final, I realized that at least 25% of the question asked revolved around finding where specific information was in the package, or on trying to replicate the elements of the design using the exact technique that I had used when I created the drawing package.  It become apparent to me that the project itself was  restricting the students thought process.  It was then that I decided then to convert both classes to a format that more fully utilized the PBCL strategy.

As I considered adopting the PBCL strategy in these classes there were some significant obstacles that I had to overcome. Some were specific to the introductory class, Revit I, but some applied to both classes.  My perceived obstacles were:

1. How do I introduce the business partner and subsequently the business problem to the class when they were completely unfamiliar with the software (Revit I)?
2. How do I organize the information and lectures so that the class members would still be able to work at their own pace, but not grind to a halt because they had worked past the level of content knowledge (Revit I & II)?
3. How do I reinforce the material covered in the lectures if the specific labs were being replaced with the final project (Revit I & II)?
4. How do I assess the classes’ progress if there were no labs and everybody was working at their own pace (Revit I & II)?
5. How could I give the necessary lectures to the class without having to give the same lecture over and over again on an individual basis, as each student came to need the information
6. How do I deal with the student’s frustration about “not being properly prepped” to do the work asked of them.  After all, not all students relish being thrust into the “driver’s seat” in this manner.

My reformatting process started with Revit I, since that appeared to be the class that represented the biggest conversion.  To get started, I decided to create a visual representation of the material I needed to cover over the course of a semester. The results of the initial flowchart are shown in figure 2, and though the print is too small to make out the individual items, what should be clear is that the steps used to complete the project are listed above the line, while the supporting content knowledge needed to complete those steps is shown below the line.

This initial visual was helpful in that it gave me a way of seeing the coursework in a way that was less linear, and therefore the opportunity to make connections between the drawing process and the supporting content in a new way.  But the results of this first attempt were in no way conclusive, so I continued this process by producing more flow charts, shown in figures 3, and 4.  Over the course of a few weeks the process of creating the flow charts allowed me to continue to integrate the two parts of the class into a more unified vision.

Fig. 2

Fig.3

Fig. 4

By the time I had created the flow chart shown in figure 5, I had a vision of the class that more fully integrated the supporting content with the stages of drawing the final project.  This new environment was one that was more fluid in nature than the environment I had created in any of the previous iterations of the class.

A key component of working within PBCL strategy is the need to identify the participant’s preconceived notions about the presented problems.  The more I worked in this visual format, the more I was able to see my preconceived notions regarding how I needed to approach teaching this class.  I was starting to see the structure more in terms of how things were connected and less in terms of what order the information needed to be presented, and this allowed me to start re-structuring the class around the addition of a business partner.

     Fig. 5

Figure 6 shows the first version of a linear syllabus.  This still utilizes a flow chart format, but it starts to apply a linear structure to the previous versions and allowed me to start answering some of the pesky scheduling issues that needed to be addressed.  As you can see, the structure of the chart allowed me to outline the topics (previously referred to as content) with the schedule, exercises, desired outcomes, and finally, methods of assessing the work being done.

The order of the first three columns (topic, schedule and exercise list), reflects my vision of how I would approach creating the assigned project, and does represent my “manipulation” of the process.  Admittedly, this kind of manipulation does not represent a “textbook” definition of how to employ the PBCL strategy and would probably not be necessary in a capstone class.  But given the amount of content I needed to present to the class so that they would be able to complete the assignment, it was necessary to “impose” this structure on the class.  It is important to understand that the implementation of the PBCL strategy exists on a spectrum, and while the structure that the syllabus shown in figure 6 may not be the purest interpretation of the PBCL strategy, it did allow me the freedom to satisfy two of the key constraints that I defined at the beginning of the process.  Those were to create an environment that introduced an unsolved business problem into the class while still presenting new content to the students.

The last two columns of the syllabus show the outcomes I hope the students will achieve and the assessment protocols I planned to use over the course of the semester.  The assessment issue was a tricky one that required a great deal of thought.  The problem was that much of the assessment tools I had been using were tied to the completion of lab projects and were therefore no longer valid.  Some of the assessments were still useful though, as I was still able to tie the lectures to chapters in the text, and homework to those chapters.  I was also still able to give quizzes and a mid term exam.  The students were now in a position to get hands on knowledge from the project being provided by the business partner, and vocabulary and other “book knowledge” from the homework assignments.

My process for converting Revit II to a more full implementation of the PBCL strategy was considerably easier than the process taken for Revit I, because Revit II was already being implemented as a PBCL class, though as I mentioned earlier, it was more of a hybrid.  I tweaked the placement of certain lessons, and then moved the start of the final project to the first day of class, but most of the content has stayed the same.

Fig. 6

To summarize, let me go back to the six questions I posed at the beginning of this paper, and now give the answers I discovered over the course of this process.

1. How do I introduce the business partner and subsequently the business problem to the class when they were completely unfamiliar with the software (Revit I)?

• In order to answer this question, I decided to start the class with two weeks using the traditional lecture and lab format.  I had introductory lessons that I used in the previous iterations of the class, so I simply used those to introduce the students to the interface and basic tools of the software program.  This gave most of the students a good enough understanding to be able to start approaching the business partners problem.  There are some students who did not become familiar enough after the initial two projects and who needed a bit more individual help.

1. How do I organize the information and lectures so that the class members would still be able to work at their own pace, but not grind to a halt because they had worked past the level of content knowledge (Revit I & II)?

• Here the onus was on me to be flexible.  I needed to be able to answer the questions that were raised by those students who were ready to move ahead, though there have been times when I directed them to work that still needed to be finished before they moved on to new aspects of the project.  Again, the key here is to be flexible, and to be able to scaffold the learning process appropriately for all the students in the class.

1. How do I reinforce the material covered in the lectures if the specific labs were being replaced with the final project (Revit I & II)?

• Well as it turns out, the business problem is offering that opportunity in even more ways than I imagined.  In fact, the students are generating their own questions and solutions about how to solve the problems at hand at a rate that is much higher than in previous sessions of the class.  I am actually going to cover more content in both classes than I have stated on the syllabus.

1. How do I assess the classes’ progress if there were no labs and everybody was working at their own pace (Revit I & II)?

• In addition to the information I presented previously, I introduced the practice of writing reflection papers to the class.  These papers give me a way to assess what the students are learning and where they are stuck, in a way that has the potential to give me more insight into what they understand.

1. How could I give the necessary lectures to the class without having to give the same lecture over and over again on an individual basis, as each student came to need the information

• To resolve this issue, I have been creating video tutorials that I then post in a network folder that all of my students have access to.  This asynchronous framework creates a way for the students to access the information when they need to review content previously covered.  I am still available to answer any question that they may have, but I am not giving the same lecture over and over again.

1. How do I deal with the student’s frustration about “not being properly prepped” to do the work asked of them.  After all, not all students relish being thrust into the “driver’s seat” in this manner.

• This has actually not been a problem at all. There have been those few students who need more guidance regarding how to start and who seem tentative about taking the reins, but none have balked at being asked to do so.

The process of moving to a fuller implementation of the PBCL process has been an interesting and gratifying experience.  I am happy to be able to share this experience with you, and to finally have a valid answer for those educators who, like me, are in a position of having to present large amounts of content, but who want to take advantage of the power of contextual learning in general, and specifically, in PBCL.  For more information about the PBCL process, please visit our website, www.makinglearningreal.org.