Problem based learning (PBL) is the teaching about a subject evolving around a central problem or case study. It was originally designed to increase learning for medical students in the mid- 1960s, where medical problems were presented to the students, who had to figure out what diagnosis to give (Norman &amp; Schmidt, 1992). In this essay I will examine how PBL can be adapted to teaching in basic science as well as the online classroom

Palner, Mikael

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6Problem based learning in the online classroomMikael PalnerDepartment of NeurologyRigshospitaletProblem based learning (PBL) is the teaching about a subject evolvingaround a central problem or case study. It was originally designed to in-crease learning for medical students in the mid- 1960s, where medical prob-lems were presented to the students, who had to figure out what diagnosisto give (Norman & Schmidt, 1992). In this essay I will examine how PBLcan be adapted to teaching in basic science as well as the online classroom.Problem DescriptionBasal pharmacology is one of the mandatory courses in the bachelor ofpharmacy program at University of Copenhagen (See box 1). It is theessence of what a pharmacy student needs to learn and needs to be goodat. Yet a lot of students struggle, the failure rate is high and with a lowaverage grade.I recently examined the congruence between curriculum-aims-scope-structure of the course and found that there was a higher ratio of phar-macokinetic calculations in the exam than in the curriculum, and that thestudents typically struggle more with these types of questions. There arealready initiatives to increase the awareness of these questions in the exam,and classroom teaching to help the students do the calculations, yet it hasnot yet had a big impact.68 Mikael PalnerI will focus on 3 questions related to the congruence between curriculum-aims-scope-structure of the course.• What do the students think about the course basal pharmacology ingeneral? Is there alignment between learning goals and actual teach-ing?• Could problem based learning be used in the teaching sessions to in-crease congruence, engagement and thereby knowledge?• Can problem based learning be incorporated into online teaching with100+ students?In order to answer these questions, I will collect empiric data from thestudents doing the basal pharmacology course in the autumn semester. Iwill formulate questions related to overall level and congruence of the basalpharmacology course in general. Then I will redesign my teaching sessionsto be more problem based, with a video case presentation, and discuss thepros and cons of this approach especially in a large course setting.Is there constructive alignment in the Basal Pharmacologycourse?Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics (PKPD) calculations covers 30%of the knowledge, 75% of the skills and 30% of the competences of the6 Problem based learning in the online classroom 69learning goals in the Basal Pharmacology course (described in box 2) andconstitute about 70% of the examination questions in the written exam. YetPKPD calculation only constitute about 50% of the teaching sessions. Itseems that there is a misalignment between the learning goals / exam andthe teaching within PKPD calculation in the basal pharmacology course,and that this might be an underling reason why students struggle with theexam.A student poll showed that more students struggled with pharmacoki-netics and pharmacodynamics than the other themes and that 40% of thestudent’s think that there was a limited congruence between the themes(figure 6.1).70 Mikael PalnerFig. 6.1. Left, results from student poll on the difficultness of the different themes.Right, results from student poll on the congruence between the themes.Empirical data was collected from the student’s course evaluations. Thecourse is generally rated quite well, yet it seems that this misalignment isrepeated in some of the comments. It is evident from the comments that thestudents find the pharmacology lectures boring and the receptor lecture arepetition, and would like them replaced with more hands on exercises andcalculations.Examples from evaluation:• Student 1: Pharmacology lectures were boring and I wish that theequation walkthrough would have been as a class teaching.• Student 2: There was too much repetition from the course Cellular andMolecular Biology; less time on repetition of the basal biology wouldbe good.• Student 3: There could be more hands on exercises, in the class teach-ings a lot of the information was on slides, which would have beenbetter in the lectures and replaced with examples and exercises in theclass teaching.• Student 4: It would be useful if the receptor-lectures were replaced withpharmacology class teaching with calculations.What can be done to increase congruence and studentlearning?It seems that Basal Pharmacology is an overall pretty well rated and goodcourse. However students do struggle with some of the basic learnings of6 Problem based learning in the online classroom 71pharmacy, especially the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics calcu-lations. Some novel thinking and restructuring might improve the lowercongruence and the comments from the students about repetition and morehands on calculations. My idea would be to combine themes and use a moreproblem based learning approach to address the hand-on wishes. Problembased learning (PBL) was originally designed to increase learning for med-ical students in the mid-1960s. According to Norman and Schmidt, 1992,PBL does not improve learning in general; actually it may reduce initiallevels of knowledge, but may foster retention of knowledge. However, thereal benefit of PBL is that it may enhance transfer of knowledge concepts tonew problems; intrinsic interest in the subject and self-directed learning. Arecent Chinese study showed an increased self-learning ability of students(Yang et al., 2020).How to use PBL in Basal Pharmacology?I think PBL can be adapted to basic science teaching with the presenta-tion of problems/cases to have students increase their interest in the sub-ject and self-directed learning which is essential for their later success inscience disciplines. It is important that while self-learning, students can re-ceive feedback and guidance on the subject to quickly correct conceptualknowledge. For this reason, PBL often involves group work and discussionsin a classroom setting, which is a challenge in online teaching.A way to included PBL in science teaching is by using concepts fromflipped classroom, where the class is “flipped” so that the students becomethe center of attention rather than the “teacher” and the “teacher” is more aguide or facilitator (Schunk, 2016). This is great in an online setting whereit can help to reduce and make screen time more efficient. Anders Schunktalks about a video to introduce the subject in flipped classroom, howeverthis can be used more broadly to think of it as an introduction of a scientificproblem, be it video, a short lecture on a case, publications or practicalproblems. It can be included in the different version of flipped classroom,but probably work best if the term video is understood more as “problemintroduction” in the broadest sense.72 Mikael PalnerIt could look something like this:It does require a really well constructed case or problem, preferentiallyone where layers can be unfolded accordingly to the student’s previousknowledge. Defined learning goals and test audiences are key factors inorder to develop such case problems, which, when constructed well, can bereused for future students.I teach in the receptor pharmacology theme of the Basal Pharmacol-ogy course, a lecture on the neurotransmitter and hormone serotonin, yetin my research I do a lot of PKPD calculations on serotonergic drugs. Iwanted to combine the two as a way to use PBL in the teachings of BasalPharmacology. In this was I can reduce the repetition of the basic serotoninbiology and include examples from pharmacokinetics, such as elimination,absorption and binding.I created a case shown in the video shown in figure 6.2.Fig. 6.2. Video case with PBL in Basal Pharmacology. Link to video:https://www.dropbox.com/s/ghushx8bvqo6th8/5-HT_pharmacokinetics_case_%28Source%29.mp4?dl=0Following the case and lecture I did a poll to ask the students what theyfelt about the case and their learning outcomes. Results are shown in figure6 Problem based learning in the online classroom 736.3. Over 90% of the students thought the case combined receptor phar-macology and pharmacokinetics to some extent and to some extend wouldincrease their learning outcome if extended to other themes and lectures aswell.Fig. 6.3. Ending polls after the PBL case lecture.One inherent problem with PBL is that students need to prepare to getthe most out of the lecture and discussion; in this case more than 40be-fore the lecture, in spite having received announcement’s and personalizedemails. Is PBL is going to be used on a larger scale successfully it needsto be part of the culture in the course and included throughout the lectures.And it may not be all teachers who feel they have the time to prepare a videocase and restructure their teaching if it is already made from last year. Yetcases can also be reused and the workload of recording a video is minimal,once you know how to do it.Qualitative DiscussionAfter the class and this report I had to chance to get additional feedback,from two colleagues who audited the teaching sessions and form two col-leagues who read the report. This discussion will touch on their observa-tions.Teaching auditIt was a common observation that the students in the class really tried toavoid the breakout sessions. They logged in and quickly logged out again74 Mikael Palnerand never turned the video on. One of my colleagues who were in a roomwith one student stopped the student and asked why they didn’t stay inthe room and worked on the exercise? The student explained “I feel, and Iknow others do to, that the breakout sessions are quite anxiety provoking, asI am forced to talk with people I don’t really know”, interestingly a secondstudent who actually wanted to do the exercise joined the room and theyeventually got the exercise going, but it was only after 2-3 minutes thatthe two students realized that they knew each other, and from there it waseasier. I think this illustrate a real problem that we as teachers don’t seewhen pushing students into breakout rooms, and I think that the use ofthese room or smaller groups need to be encourage throughout the semesterif they are going to work well. Also the use of video is really important inthe small rooms to have that physical contact and interaction that is oftenlacking in online teaching. To illustrate I am copying a thread from twitterabout flipped classroom in courses with many students.6 Problem based learning in the online classroom 7576 Mikael PalnerFig. 6.4. Twitter thread on large online flipped classroom.The take home message is that groups of unknown people are frighten-ing to some and that it is extremely important to keep a systematic breakoutroom system, where it is the same people in the same discussion groupsover the whole course. I think the system used in the twitter thread is great,and something I will take with me for the next semesters.Report feedback ”what made me wonder”Colleague 1: I wonder if the student’s experience of understanding the sub-ject better correlated with the exam outcome. Not because exams are thebest outcome, but because it is the only real parementer we can measure.And secondly how can we get the students to prepare better?6 Problem based learning in the online classroom 77Fig. 6.5. Ending exam, average passing grade 5.25, 20% failed.As an overall the students did relatively as usual, and with a specificlook at the exam questions related to my lecture, they had an average markof 2.9 (out of 5) which isn’t great, but reflects the overall mark of the wholecourse (My exam questions are attached as a supplement).Colleague 2: I am especially wondering if PBL works if non of the stu-dents are prepared. Could an alternative be to included the 15 minute videoin the beginning of the lecture before a discussion.I think this is definitely an option, yet I don’t want to take the 15 minutesfrom the lecture and use it on something generic. I had a discussion with myteaching supervisor about this, here an alternative strategy was suggested.Where students were quizzed immediately in the start of the class in rela-tion to the video so that students became aware of the learning the videoprovided and also helped others to gain that knowledge in form of the quizanswers. There could be other options, but the overall thought is to providea carrot for preparing.ConclusionIn conclusion, problem base learning can be used, also in large online set-tings with 100+ students. However it is not without problems of its own.One inherent problem is changing the culture of the way the students pre-pare for a lecture and how the teachers prepare for their lecture, this can be78 Mikael Palnerdone but require an cultural change from the beginning. Secondly, studentwellbeing should be in the mind of the teacher, as some students found itanxiety provoking to participate in breakout sessions with “strangers”, asother students in big courses are like strangers to them. Yet I do think it isa great tool and I will develop more of these sessions in the future.ReferencesNorman, G., & Schmidt, H. G. (1992). The psychological basis of problem-based learning: A review of the evidence. Academic medicine,67(9), 557–565.Schunk, A. (2016). Flipped classroom: Et inspirationshaefte til din under-visning, 1–32.Yang, X., Chen, S., Ma, C., Fan, X., Song, J., Pan, Y., & Tang, X. (2020).Application of a novel teaching model integrating multiple teach-ing methods in periodontology education for chinese undergradu-ates, 1–17.6 Problem based learning in the online classroom 79A Homepage

Problem based learning in the online classroom

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Problem based learning in the online classroom

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