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Problem-Based Learning in an Educational Psychology Course I did not take the full plunge into a problem-based approach to teaching educational psychology until 1998. That fall, as part of a project for the Higher Education Program of the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, I adopted a problem-based learning format for the course. The purpose of my project was to redesign an undergraduate educational psychology class in order to promote students' understanding and use of the subject matter and to focus specifically on the prior knowledge and transfer of learning dilemmas, as I described in the Introduction. The course context. The course is undergraduate educational psychology offered in fall, 1998 and spring 1999 at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. The course enrolled approximately 30 students each semester. The majority of students were in the junior year of the teacher education program. The PBL format addresses these dilemmas in several ways. For example, in a PBL class, students regularly develop hypotheses and hunches about the causes of specific problems. In this way, they articulate their personal theories as an integral part of the search for solutions. Moreover, new facts or circumstances can be introduced into the problem that conflict with students' initial beliefs. Consequently, students often find that their first hunches don't work and they need to pursue other possibilities. Another advantage of the PBL approach is the fact that transfer is an integral part of problems solving. Students learn much of the subject matter in the context of trying to find and apply relevant ideas to problem situations. In order to deal with these dilemmas, my 1998-99 course was organized around a series of complex, open-ended problems consisting of scenarios one might find in a classroom, school or school district. As a set, the problems encompass the content areas of educational psychology so that students learn "the content" as they solve problems for which the material is relevant. As the course syllabus describes, the course consists of an introduction and three problems, each of which take about three weeks: The problem solving process is structured so that students articulate, question, and revise their understanding of the subject as they work through each problem. For example, when students encounter a new problem, they articulate their initial understanding and beliefs about the scenario. During the ensuing problem solving process students are challenged to develop their ideas in light of: 1. alternative perspectives from peers. 2. additional information I add to the problem scenario that may conflict with or confirm their ideas. 3. reading material that introduces disciplinary concepts and perspectives relevant to the problems. 4. writing assignments in which students use course material to analyze and explain issues related to the problems. 5. commentary I provide on writing assignments and in consultation during group problem solving sessions in class. Each problem is followed by several transfer tasks in which students are asked to apply the concepts they were learning in the problems to new situations. These transfer tasks both help me assess how well students have learned concepts and to introduce new ideas and information. In addition, in order to assess students' overall understanding of the course content, students complete a pre-test and a final assignment .
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