Pre-PBL thoughts for Instructors

Barrows (How to Design a Problem Based Curriculum for the Pre-Clinical Year, 1985) also provides a suggested list of objectives for a course and recommends that both faculty and students are provided with the list at the start of the course. Although Barrows specialized in the application of PBL in medical education, his ideas can be generalized to other laboratory sciences. Here are his suggested objectives:

By the end of the course, the student should be able to demonstrate capabilities in the following areas:

Analytical Reasoning Skills

Generate several hypotheses
Appropriate use of hypothesis-oriented inquiry-strategy
Problem synthesis
New hypothesis or new inquiry approach
Protocol-oriented or routine inquiry
Appropriate laboratory or diagnostic tests
Final working hypothesis
Management plan to correct the problem

Clinical or Laboratory skills

Self-assessment and self-study skills

Assess adequacy of knowledge and reasoning skills in evaluating problems presented
List information that needs to be reviewed or learned

Knowledge

List of knowledge that needs to be learned and appropriately applied in analysis of problems

The next page describes some further changes that the instructor must address during the implementation of PBL.

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