Originally published by the FASoS Teaching & Learning Blog on 22 January 2021. PBL course design is a recurring topic in academic literature, but also in staff development. This concerns, for instance, applying general PBL principles to assignment design, but also the needfor varying assignments. The design process is always limited by variables such as available resources and place in the curriculum and. These past twelve months the pandemic created more limitations, but also opportunities to move beyond more traditional course design. The BA European Studies is currently going through a revision of its curriculum. One of the new courses concerns a new skills training course that revolves around training students in writing what Booth and colleagues call “research problems” (consisting of a topic, a research question, and their relevance). Working with Research Problems includes components from previous BA skills courses, but also introduces new topics. The course takes place in period 2 of the first year. Course design From the start, I wanted to design a course that included both synchronous and asynchronous elements – which actually allows the course to be taught on-campus and online. There are lectures and tutorials, as in a regular course. Lectures are 60-75 minutes long, with most of them accompanied by videos, for instance on interdisciplinarity, concepts and methods. The tutorials last one hour and focus on the post-discussion, with students being responsible for arranging their own pre-discussions. Coherence was created through a linear, weekly structure, which has for instance also been used in Kirsop-Tayler and colleagues’ course on political ecology. In addition, I recorded a weekly podcast to introduce each week’s topic, which also included contributions by colleagues Pablo Del Hierro and John Harbord, and BA ES alumna Mareike Müller. Adding audiovisual material to the course helps to cater for different learning styles, but also builds on work that stresses that using a variety of material makes for a richer learning experience. Time to reflect Last week I handed in the grades from December’s first sit. With 75% of the final research proposals having received a passing grade, overall the course seems to have prepared students well for writing their first piece of research. Lecture attendance hovered around 190 students per lecture, with students asking interesting and important questions. The audiovisual material was also widely watched and listened to, with podcast episodes and videos having on average been played around 200 times each. But not everything went as planned. In addition to some smaller intended changes, there are a couple of things that I particularly want to address.
Interestingly, when I decided half-way through the course to include learning objectives in the podcast and to no longer ask students to do their own pre-discussion, quite some groups decided to go ahead anyways. Sometimes because it allowed them to meet more regularly – which is as good a reason as any. I have great confidence in our students and believe that they can do this – emphasising the intended self-directed nature of PBL. But to make this work, I plan to include a pre-discussion training in the first week of next year’s course.
Work in progress!
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