Problem-Based - Clemson University
Contents
1. Education Education by Design 2000 8 9 10 11 Lewis J Perelman AHyperlearning the New Technolody and The End of Education Avon Books 1992 J M Savoie and A S Hughes Problem based learning as classroom solution Educational Leadership 52 3 54 57 1994 Elaine Seymour and Nancy M Hewitt Talking About Leaving Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences Westview Press Boulder CO 1996 Luann Wilkerson and Wim H Gijselaers ed itors Bringing Problem Based Learning to Higher Education Theory and Practice New Directions for Teaching and Learning No 68 Jossey Bass 19962. do something but not explain how C 2 If one can only tell me how and not explain why B and 3 If one can do it explain how and explain why A 3 How I Run Class Robert Lee Moore 1882 1974 was a famous math ematician but he might be even more famous for his teaching Moore was an early advocate of the inquiry based problem based teaching meth ods The archetypal story is worth telling here Moore would come into class on the first day as ask Are there any questions There never were so he would dismiss the class This continued until people started asking questions By then the uninterested students and those only interested in a grade would have dropped out Even starting late in the semester Moore would cover all of the material using his reversed Socratic method I am not as confident as Moore I will ask for questions and cover whatever is asked before mov ing on to new material If there are no questions I try to generate them by challenging the class or giving them an in class assignment e Develop Historically You as an instructor of a course know the sub ject but it is all new to the students Recreating the context that surrounded seminal problem is a cheap way to find PBL exercises e Learning Styles An underlying message of PBL is know your self One important new tool is that of learn ing skills Of the many inventories I have tried the Learning Skills Inventory d
3. Problem Based Learning Applied to Programming Instruction D E Stevenson Computer Science Department Clemson University Clemson SC 29634 0974 steve cs clemson edu Abstract Problem based learning is an old idea whose time has come again In PBL the student is the central focus The instructor serves as a guide not a fount of knowledge This paper focuses on how one person uses the PBL philosophy in computer science education Problem based learning harkens back to the much romanticized little schoolhouse on the prairie In the 19th Century Midwest the schools had but one teacher to teach all grades To ac complish this the teacher used groups to teach one another i e vertically and horizontally integrated groups with the older children helping the younger The literature on PBL is enormous Virtually every comparison of PBL with kill and drill or lecture shows the superiority of PBL If it is superior then why not apply it to com puter science education 1 Moving towards Change Several years ago I took stock of my teaching tech niques and the results I was getting I was not par ticularly pleased Some observations were 1 Students do not productively read code when they are learning to code 2 Students cannot symbolically manipulate nor ab stract code Students do not work through text book details of examples 3 Students cannot develop tests and carry through a test plan 4 The correlat
4. ent 2 Loss of 10 with permission to resubmit ex cept for egregious offenses is awarded to the following offenses 1 Late 2 Failure to fol lowing specifications and other software engi neering violations and 3 Failure to test ade quately There is one problem I have not completely cured In semester long project courses compilers the stu dents want mid term grades For the most part they have had only one or two milestones by that time and having a reasonable assessment is hard Long projects need to be carefully planned out I use Microsoft Project The students are required to use Project as a history keeping vehicle The final report requires that they submit their actual elapsed times Project contains all the milestones and the initial plan 4 Conclusions I have presented problem based learning as I use it in undergraduate and post graduate classes Problem based learning has the students work on problems rather than to have the professor stand up and lecture My experiences are 1 Once they get used to it most students seem to like the give and take of class 2 Students are much more likely to engage me out ees side of class sometimes finding myself in the in locus parentis role 3 Those who got to college by memorization obvi ously do not like this sort of class 4 Students self select for final grade I have not been surprised 5 I do not write hourly tests the hom
5. ents learn during their self directed learning must be applied to the problem with re analysis and resolution They must do this in a way that will provide a deeper understanding of the problem and insure the recall of that informa tion when they are faced with similar problems in the future 6 Students must reflect on what has been learned A closing analysis of the concepts and principles used to solve the problem is essential 7 Self and peer assessment should be carried out at the completion of each problem and at the end of every curricular unit The ability to ac curately monitor the adequacy of personal per formance is essential to developing life long self directed study skills The ability to provide col leagues with accurate feedback is an important skill in life and career 8 Although a major component of the assessment of students progress comes from self and peer assessment that occurs at the end of every prob lem additional formal assessments must assess the students problem solving skills self directed learning skills and ability to recall and apply an integrated knowledge base in work with a prob lem Experts are not rule followers and they are very intuitive about their subjects Students must work towards this mastery this expertise is gained by working on problems with the tools the student will ultimately use For this reason I long ago adopted the following grading policy 1 If one can only
6. eveloped by Felder has consistently been the most insight ful for students The purpose of the site is to 1 assess the learning style of the student and 2 present strategies that the students can em ploy when their professor has a different style Felder uses four axes global sequential active reflective visual verbal and sensing intuitive For the complete survey and explanations see http www2 ncsu edu unity lockers users f felder public TLSpage html To effectively use these tools you must first take the survey You may be shocked as to your own learning styles The Felder site has several pages that explain the various learning styles Next have the students take the survey I always an nounce my own learning styles Lecturing Lecturing is not the first resort it is the last resort Lecturing harks back from the days when books were not readily available this is hardly the case today I do not lecture per se but I do come to class with prepared remarks to drive discussions Questions Use student questions to drive class discussion and homework The data structures course has been taught this way for several years On the other hand I have a standing set of prob lems that is announced at the beginning of the semester which guarantees that the subject is sys tematically covered Reverse Socratic The Socratic method is gener ally taken as the teacher asking questions of the students Moore s procedure i
7. ework and other problems serve better In some quarters this is called performance based assessment 6 One must guard against gaming by the stu dents In conclusion answer almost any questions with a proviso If the question is one that the stu dent should be able to reason to an answer help them do that reasoning by guiding the discussion If this question can be reworked into a simple ex periment by all means assign it If all else fails assign it as a research project References 1 American College Personnel Association The student learning imperative American College Personnel Association Washington DC 1994 2 David Boud and Grahame Feletti The Chal lenge of Problem Based Learning Kogan Page Ltd 1998 3 Ernest L Boyer Scholarship Reconsidered Priorities of the Professorate The Carnegie Foundation 1997 4 M T H Chi M Bassok M Lewis P Reimann and R Glasser Self explanations How students study and use examples in learn ing to solve problems Cognitive Science 13 145 182 1989 5 M T H Chi P J Feltovich and R Glaser Categorization and representation of physics problems by experts and novices Cognitive Science pages 121 152 1981 6 Robert Delisle How to Use Problem Based Learning in the Classroom Assn for Super vision amp Curriculum Development 1997 7 Rick Gordon Problem Based Service Learn ing A Fieldguide for Making a Difference in Higher
8. ion between scores on homework and final grade is too strong to deny 5 Unexecuted code written on tests is meaningless My conclusions were 1 lectures do not work due to student passivity and 2 active learning is needed to cement concepts One approach used in medical schools was exactly what I was looking for This approach is called problem based learning PBL I report my use of problem based learning activities in three courses a beginning service course the data structures course and compiler courses I focus on programming courses although I use many of the same techniques in theoretical classes The remainder of the paper discusses the essentials of PBL Section 2 how I use these con cepts in my classes in Section 3 and some conclu sions Section 4 of two years of strictly PBL teach ing practices 2 Problem Based Learning Essentials This discussion is adapted from the discussion of the same name at the University of Southern Illi nois School of Medicine Problem based learn ing is the standard pedagogical approach in med ical schools world wide Problem based learning began at McMaster University Medical School in 1969 Their rationale is 1 Students must be come life long self motivated learners 2 Learning takes place in small group tutorials and is problem based and self directed and 3 Progress is moni tored by continuous personal and group evaluation For searching purposes the following te
9. lass questions These in class teams may be the base team but I may reassign teams for the day The Lab Report Each program is submitted with a laboratory style report The purpose of the lab report is to get the students to start explaining their actions The report follows a modified Polya scheme 1 The first section is either a user s manual if the exercise is the development of a pro gram object that someone else would use or a discussion of the problem The students must justify their course of action 2 Test plan 3 Source for the program 4 Test execution captured by some automatic process Cheaters usually aren t good enough to confute script 5 A section describing what the student learned during the solving of the problem what new technique etc was used and how this helped This last point is the most crucial in my expe rience Poor students will slap down something trying to guess what you want to hear In a re cent semester just the opposite happened a stu dent had the light come on and he wrote about it He turned in the best projects the rest of the semester Grading I demand excellence For prepared homework my policy is that if it is not according to specifi cations I will not grade it until it gets is This is what students should expect to have happen on the outside My grading policy is very straightforward 1 Running untested undocumented program is worth fifty perc
10. plete The last project or two incorporate most of the material of the course A great source for these problems is the ACM Repository of problems used in program ming contests This of course must be different for the differ ent levels of courses In the freshman class the standing problems are very simple to state and may even contain specific directions concerning the method of solution The data structure prob lems emphasize performance and correctness the problem statements give much less specific direc tions In the compiler class the problems are taken from the development requirements This is easy to do because I give the students a Mi crosoft Project file that has the course laid out as a Gannt chart The Use of Teams Non academic organizations survive using teams Using teams correctly in academia is difficult In many of my colleagues mind students in teams are cheating I avoid this by making the team component worth one letter grade ten percent Every student does every exercise individually A bit of planning solves the dishonesty problem Students must however learn to work with one another Students need to be supported and the need to learn how to find that support Read Talking about Leaving 10 The team is used for support I form base teams by randomly as signing students to three person teams I expect these teams to study together and help one an other I use in class teams to tackle the in c
11. rms are em ployed for PBL student centered problem based inquiry based integrated collaborative and reit erative learning The Southern Illinois University School of Medicine another PBL pioneer describes www pbli org pbl pbl_essentials htm PBL as both a curriculum and a process The cur riculum consists of carefully selected and designed problems that demand from the learner acquisition of critical knowledge problem solving proficiency self directed learning strategies and team partici pation skills The essential concepts as documented on the Southern Illinois web site are 1 Students must take the responsibility for their own learning Students must be able to efficiently and effectively identify what they know what they need to learn and what resources they need to accomplish their task 2 Problem based learning is student centered The teacher provides only the problems and experi ences that challenge the students to learn what is expected in the curriculum The teacher guides students with the problem as the students de velop problem solving skills identify what they need to learn and develop self directed learning skills 3 The problems used in problem based learning must be ill structured and allow for free inquiry The activities carried out in problem based learn ing must be those valued in the professional world 4 Collaboration is an essential skill that students must master 5 What stud
12. s to get the stu dents to ask the questions I want to help the students reason to a conclusion Yes poor stu dents hate this approach because I do not give them the answer In class Exercises I strive for almost constant chaos in class by hav ing the students doing some exercise together Planning for this is not as hard as one might think 1 Look at your old lectures for the topic 2 What is the point 3 How can you make the students discover this point rather than tell them What thought experiment can you devise to make it happen What short programming project will make them discover what you want Or turn student questions as they occur into overnight homework problem Make them work on it For example I rarely answer syntax ques tions in class I assign it as an overnight problem to be explored Another source of problems in class are the stu dents themselves For example they all proudly tell you they have a 600 MHz computer but they do not usually know what that means A little discovery here goes a long way to under standing the Big Oh notation for example Standing Problem Sets The mechanism to insure that all topics are cov ered by semester s end is the standing problem set This is a set of problems developed before the beginning of the semester i e instead of planning lectures I plan problems These prob lems are chosen to become incrementally more difficult and more com
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