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Thriving in Academe
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Reflections on Problems in the Classroom

“He should tell us what we need to know—not to think.” This student comment from my sophomore-level microbiology course at first stunned me, because I was trying hard to get students to think critically in the classroom. It prompted me to devise better ways to introduce and improve critical thinking.

Problem-based learning (PBL) is one such approach because it links critical thinking with real-life applications. After designing a PBL exercise that placed students in the role of “disease detectives” investigating a disease outbreak, another colleague and I piloted the exercise in her microbiology course. The results provide some important lessons in using PBL.

Start small. As the resource persons, we were challenged to keep up with the investigative information requested by students and then, as guides, to help them consider what they needed next. Don’t initially pilot a PBL exercise in a large class with many student groups.

Communicate the PBL process. Student surveys indicated we did not “give them all the material” they needed and we were not organized. In actuality, we had not communicated completely that the dissemination of PBL information seems chaotic, but in fact is realistic. Our lesson learned was to spend more time getting students to understand the framework of PBL.

In the second piloting, we had few student difficulties. They found the exercise fun, useful—and worth their time to think.

— Jeffrey Pommerville
Glendale Community College

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