Slides from a presentation at the CHER 2015 (Consortium of Higher Education Researchers) conference, 7 September 2015.

1. If PBL is the answer, then
what is the problem?
Hans Hüttel – Aalborg University, Denmark
Dorina Gnaur – VIA University College, Denmark
CHER 2015
Lisbon

2. PBL = Problem-Based
Learning
PBL arose in various settings and now exists in several
incarnations in higher education
In our work we consider project-organized PBL that is
used at the universities of Aalborg and Roskilde in
Denmark

3. PBL is becoming ritualized
Our findings indicate that PBL practice is becoming
increasingly ritualized; teachers and students often
appear to be “going through the motions” instead of
engaging in a problem-based approach.

4. A missed opportunity?
It is often argued that PBL is an efficient approach that will
encourage deep learning.
Many universities now try to adopt elements of PBL; some
universities in Asia (e.g. the National University of
Singapore, the Technical University of Malaysia and the
University of Hong Kong) now introduce forms of PBL as
their main approach to teaching.
If PBL becomes the victim of ritualization, then the
advantages of the approach may fail to materialize.

5. Where does the project-organized
PBL tradition come from?
Around 1970 several things happened:
A perceived need for graduates with more relevant and
specialized skills
The anti-authoritarian student movement
The German school of critical pedagocy (Negt, Wagenschein
et al.)
The University of Roskilde (1972) and the University of
Aalborg (1974)

6. Project-
organized
PBL
Knud Illeris is a pioneer
of project-organized PBL

7. What is project-organized
PBL?
• Students work together in groups
• The group chooses a problem setting
• The group analyzes the problem and, based on this, provides a problem
statement and an analysis of how to solve the problem
• The group attempts to solve the problem
• The problem analysis, methodological decisions and account of the
activities and reflections related to problem solving are most often
documented in a project report

8. What is project-organized
PBL ideally ?
1.Introduction and definition of the framework for the project work,
2.Introduction of methods and the general subject area,
3.Social introduction and group formation,
4.Choice of topic and problem to be worked on,
5.Formulation of the project idea,
6.Writing, evaluation and corrections of the project.
(Illeris, 1974)

9. What is project-organized
PBL ideally ?
Once you have formed a project group, you need to define a
problem together that you want to examine. The problem forms
the basis of your project and you are to a great extent responsible
for defining this yourselves within a set though often very broad
theme frame.
(AAU, official description of PBL practice)

10. What is project-organized
PBL in reality at AAU?
• A project takes a semester
• A semester coordinator collects project proposals from potential supervisors
before the start of the semester
• The project proposals are presented to the students at the semester
introduction
• Students form groups based on the project proposals
• At the end of the semester, the semester coordinator writes a final
evaluation report based on written comments from students and teachers/
supervisors

11. “PBL” as a ritual
An excerpt from an 4th semester evaluation report:
The students were well motivated this semester because the courses
fit together and the project work was mostly a check list.

12. “PBL” as a ritual
An excerpt from a 6th semester evaluation report:
The students have, like the students from the previous year,
very limited experience with independently developing a
problem statement in their project work. They see this semester
as “more loose”. Future semester coordinators should devote
some time to summarizing PBL at the start of the semester.

13. “PBL” as a ritual
An excerpt from an 8th semester evaluation report:
One rarely comes across an actual problem statement in reports. The problem is often
described with a clear delimitation and unambiguous content. Often simple scenarios
are described, in which the need for a solution appears unproblematic and absolute.
The reports frequently lack a chapter about the choice of theory and method. The
project is frequently seen as a large construction assignment with well-defined tasks
and known solution strategies.
Many students wish to choose their project from a project catalogue instead of stating
a problem themselves. The freedom involved in making one’s own decisions is
sometimes seen as a source of uncertainty.

14. “PBL” as a ritual
Project proposals often focus on a “solution” (not on a problem):
In this project your task will be to build a system where word of
mouth is used for recommendation purposes. You are welcome
to use the data available online …
These data need to be correlated in order to create a recommender system
based on that. You will need to compare the algorithm at least with
collaborative filtering.

15. “PBL” as a ritual
Project proposals often focus on a “solution” (not on a problem):
To improve on this, we can take advantage of a compute cluster to parallelise the
task by verifying hundreds of models concurrently. Then, we can employ heuristics
for selecting "good" parameter variables to avoid exploring all combinations. This
is exactly what this project proposes.
The students should develop a small parameter sweeping client that uses an existing
RESTful web service to perform and distribute the model checking task using
UPPAAL… The students are expected to investigate heuristics and implement
heuristics for selecting parameters during the parameter sweep.

16. Who owns the project?
The students?
The supervisor?
Whoever wrote the project
proposal?
(Roskilde University, the 1970s)

17. Who owns the project?
In official parlance, project ownership is central to learning:
According to Illeris (1981), enquiry, on its own, does not constitute the basis for an
active process of acquiring knowledge through critical reflection: “A problem is
not a problem in a psychological sense if the person who has to work with it does
not experience it as a problem.” (p. 83, our translation). Therefore, participant
control is an interrelated principle. When students themselves define and
formulate the enquiry, they have a conscious relation of ownership to it, and they
experience it as a problem (anomaly), which implicitly encourages involvement
and motivation. Participant control and the ownership of the problem setting are
therefore seen as fundamental for the students' engagement in the learning process.
(Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2009)

18. Three modes of learning
Reproductive learning
Productive learning
Creative learning

19. Reproductive learning
Uses conditioning models of learning, resulting in
routinized actions that are performed without much
conscious attention and control. Reproduction of
knowledge and methods becomes central.
Reproductive learning can create the impression that
learning = being able to reproduce (aka surface learning)
If someone else owns the project, students are more
tempted to use reproductive learning.

20. Creative and productive
learning
Creative and productive learning are forms of developmental learning.
Productive learners have to invent and test a solution to a given
problem based on knowledge about the task and about possible
alternative solutions
Creative learners need to develop and use their own authority to
evaluate outcomes and choose methods but also to define the task
and the conditions at hand; the learner must diagnose a situation that
may be unclear or puzzling.
This is what we expect graduates to be able to! One cannot be
creative by “going through the motions”.

21. Where does “PBL as ritual”
come from?
Students try to live up to expectations!
Project catalogues can be prepared beforehand and the
supervisor tend to “think about the entire project”.
Many supervisors think in terms of solutions and
products, not in terms of problems.
It is easy to think of standard solutions that are known to fit the
curriculum and are guaranteed to work!

22. What can we do to address
these concerns?
A change of practice: Get rid of project catalogues!
Supervisors need to reflect on what it means for a
project to be problem-based.

23. What can we do to address
these concerns?
Current experiments in the degree programme in
computer science:
No project catalogues for the 3rd and 4th semester
Project supervision focuses explicitly on problem
analysis and is supported by a status seminar after
one third of the semester has passed. The status
seminar focuses on the problem statement and the
choice of methods to be used.

24. What supervisors said
For both groups the status seminar was time well spent.
It helped the groups see their projects from another
angle and exposed substantial deficiencies in both
projects. I think it addressed some concerns in the
process at an early stage for both groups. The way the
groups handled the feedback was substantially different:
afterwards, group A had many questions about the
consequences of the choices that they had made [in
their project], whereas group B was more interested in
my opinions as to what the right choices would be.

25. What supervisors said
Group A were relatively quick to find their “own” project
and the rest of their analysis was to a large extent
characterized by them carrying the project by themselves
– my role was to help them with delimiting the problem
and with the search for information. Group B found the
format very difficult and sought a lot of inspiration in the
examples of projects that I had. This also meant that the
groups did not end up “owning” the project, and the
analysis phase was characterized by an expectation that I
would contribute with the essential insights.

26. What supervisors said
One group was very quick to think of an interesting
problem… The other group told me that they had
looked at old project reports and wanted to choose a
project topic from one of these even though they had
been told not to do this! This was fairly frustrating; I
told them that this was not acceptable and eventually
they chose a problem setting that I had mentioned. … I
am unfortunately still not sure if this group “owned”
their project the way they should have.

27. What students said
We carried out a survey among 4th semester students.
One student wrote:
Concerning the project report it can sometimes appear as if it is
the only purpose of the project. Since this is what one is assessed on
the basis of eventually.
This is another indicator of ritualization – the focus on
the product.

28. What students said

29. What students said

30. What can we do to address
these concerns?
Institutional support: Encourage problem-based PBL! Use
the semester descriptions to describe best practice in
this respect.
Technological support: Use technological tools that can
support the problem analysis of the project.

31. Further work
Institution-wide action research: Further experiments with
de-ritualization of PBL projects. Are the issues that
need to be addressed the same for all degree
programmes?
At the international level: Make institutions that adopt
PBL aware of the dangers of ritualization.