2 Students experiences of PBL

During the years 2001-2002 we have collected data concerning students experiences about problems/cases we have used at introductory programming course, tutor's role in a group and students experiences about PBL as a learning method. Data was collected through interviews and questionnaires.

Problems /cases

After the last PBL group meeting we asked the students to evaluate how interesting they found each problem/case. We also asked students to describe some qualitative that made the problem more or less interesting to them. Summary of answers is in a table below.

Qualitative that made the problem/case interesting	Qualitative that made the problem/case less interesting
Problem was concrete and clear There were several possible solutions Challenging Required amount of work was fair Problem was connected to programming exercise (that is one could try newly learned skills in practice) Problem was connected to students own areas of interest (e.g. photography or computer games) Required imagination and creativity	Did not connect to practice and/or programming exercise Too theoretical Too challenging Too wide-ranging problem which was hard to manage Unclear assignment Did not have interface to students experiences (e.g. If student didn't play games he/she had difficulties to figure out how they work and thus this kind of problem was not interesting) Was too similar to previous problems

Tutor's role

According to students questionnaires and interwievs, the students find that:

Tutor is safety net against incorrect knowledge and reasoning.
The tutor may provide wider or new perspectives to to the subject and helps to focus on essential content.
If the group gets stuck, the tutor helps the group to proceed to a more fruitful direction.
The tutor helps in group dynamic and social issues.
The tutor maintains a balance in participation between different members of the group.
The presence of tutor creates additional pressure for the students to work harder during the self-study phase.

As previous list shows tutor's role in a group is essential one. In spite of all, it is possible to have well functional tutorless PBL groups, too. We have experiences of tutorless PBL groups (that is the tutor was present only two first group meeting and after that students met alone). However, we noticed that there was a greater variance how these tutorless groups worked than tutored PBL groups. Some tutorless PBL groups worked very well while others did not worked so well. In fact in well functional tutorless PBL groups student were pleased that tutor was not present "holding them back". Students reported that the atmosphere in a group was open and relaxed and that it was easy to ask "silly" questions. On the other hand, the malfunctional groups had difficulties with participation, free riders, preparations (that is studying during self directed learning) and strong personalities.

PBL as a learning method

We asked students opinions about PBL as way of learning. Answers were twofold:

Positive sides of PBL:

Negative sides of PBL:

Social way to study

Possibility to study in a group
One gets to know the other students at the same course (an important issue in a large scale courses where students come from many different training programs)
Student can become a part of a social net from where it is possible to get social and factual help when needed
Possibility to learn group working skills

Attending the group meetings meant that students spent more time thinking and discussing course topics
Discussing in a group enounces new viewpoints
The group pressures to work harder
One learns how to search information from multiple sources
Motivates more than lecture based course
Brings variety

Takes a lot of time:

Requires a lot of self directed learning
Seeking the new information was laborious and time consuming

Ineffective way of studying: self-directed learning and group meetings took more time than what their benefits were

Free riders in a group
Possibility to understand the facts wrong (in tutorless groups)
Easy to fall behind the group if not studying hard enough

As seen from table below many possitive sides of PBL concerned the social aspect of working and suding in a group. At Helsinki University of Technology most basic courses are large scale courses where teaching methods are lectures and exercise sessions. That means students usually study alone in a larger student group. When PBL type of learning is offered it is regarded as something special and to the most of the students it is new way of studing.

The most often mentioned negative side of PBL was that this type of learning takes a lot of time. Some students felt that they did not get enought benefits for the time they spent to groupmeetings and self-directed learning. As it is true that PBL takes time there might be an another supplemental explanations to this comment which are more to do with students experisences of University level courses and their way of understand what is learning:

The most students are first year University students and basic programming course is one of the first large (5 study week = 200 hours) course they take. Students are not yet used to how much work University level course requires.
Some students may still think that listening a lecture = learning that is learning is something passive where you only have to receive the information the lecturer gives. PBL certainly takes more time when comparing the time needed to student directed PBL type of learning and listening lectures.

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