PBL

Preamble: Other than the rapid PBL in session 1, the course is not based on PBL units. PBL is included here in the syllabus primarily to allow time for you to formulate an initial "learning/engaging" project that allows you to adopt or adapt the themes and activities from each subsequent session. However, there are benefits in looking at pedagogy at this early point: This said, if this chapter were to be included in the book, it would probably be as an interlude, perhaps after session 6.
 * 1) The elements of PBL and other approaches to teaching overlap, thus providing a basis for compare and contrast how the elements are put together. (Session 6 uses historical case-based learning and the course as a whole makes use of critical thinking themes, in which ideas and practices are illuminated by placing them in tension with alternatives.)
 * 2) PBL is played out in relation to a number of tensions, which can also be read a critical thinking themes for illuminating other forms of teaching as well as a student's own view about how they learn. That is to say, thinking about approaches to teaching (even if you are not a teacher [yet]) is also a way to think about how to make the most of learning opportunities.

1. Introduction Project- or problem-Based Learning (PBL) is an approach to education in which participants address a scenario by shaping their own directions of inquiry and developing their skills as investigators, trading a systematic encounter with knowledge that others have established for the possibility of re-engagement with oneself as an avid learner and inquirer. 1a. Mini-lecture: Rapid PBL

2. Reading Part A include component="page" wikiName="cct" page="PBLguidedtour" editable="1"

--- Part B Read two PBL cases that had their origins in the same real-life mix up at an IV Fertilization clinic. Make note of a) how the cases match or diverge from the ideas in the reading above; and b) the differences in presentation, sequencing, and instructions and of how you, as a student, might undertake the PBL in each case. In class we will discuss what you have noted in both areas. //Note: We aren't doing either embryo mix-up PBL in class; we're using the contrast to think about PBL. Therefore, you do not have to do any of the instructions for the PBL cases.//

3. Activity Compare two versions of the embryo mix up scenario and instructions, in light of how better to introduce a student to PBL.

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