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European Journal of Engineering Education
Vol. 30, No. 1, March 2005, 137–149
Problem-based learning: a student evaluation of an
implementation in postgraduate engineering education
LUIS ROBERTO C. RIBEIRO*† and MARIA DA GRAÇA N. MIZUKAMI‡
†PPGE – Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Via Washington Luís, Km 235,
13565-905 São Carlos, SP, Brazil
‡DEME – Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Via Washington Luís, Km 235,
13565-905 São Carlos, SP, Brazil
(Received 30 September 2003; accepted 15 April 2004)
This paper presents the student evaluation of a problem-based learning (PBL) implementation in
the postgraduate engineering curriculum of a public university in Brazil. This investigation adopts a
qualitative and collaborative design, as suggested when the research objective is to study phenomena
in their natural settings in terms of the meanings people bring to them and when the data collected
cannot be statistically handled easily. To this end, an instructional method based on PBL principles
and activities was implemented in an administration theory course during one semester. The data
utilized in this paper derive from participant observation and an end-of-term questionnaire in which the
students were asked to evaluate the instructional method, its advantages and disadvantages, comment
on some of its features, and give improvement suggestions. The student evaluations show that the
approach used was very satisfactory and may have promoted the acquisition of knowledge as well as
the development of some desirable skills and attitudes, such as teamwork and communication skills
and respect for divergent ideas. Despite the favourable outcomes, the conclusion about the viability
of using this instructional method in the context in question still depends on further consideration of
some institutional and teacher-related issues.
Keywords: Problem-based learning; Engineering education; Postgraduate education
1. Introduction
The world is going through a fast process of change, attributed by many scholars to the recent
technological revolution. Education could not remain untouched by this process, let alone engi-
neering education, as it encompasses much of the knowledge with immediate technological
applications. The effects of this process on engineering education – such as the rapid expan-
sion of its knowledge base and the obsolescence of much of what is learnt at school – force
engineers to relearn continuously their profession.
*Corresponding author. Email: luisrcr@iris.ufscar.br
European Journal of Engineering Education
ISSN 0304-3797 print/ISSN 1469-5898 online © 2005 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/03043790512331313796
138 L. R. C. Ribeiro and M. da Graça N. Mizukami
Furthermore, engineering education is also affected by the changing nature of engineering
practice, which has grown from invention in its origin to include work in many areas of pro-
ductive organizations, such as research and development, budgeting, marketing, production,
service to consumers, etc. In addition, the instability of today’s job market may cause practis-
ing and future engineers to come to change positions in the same company, work for diverse
companies and in different industrial sectors, or even open their own business during their
lives, which demands that they have attributes other than just a sound technical knowledge
base so as to succeed in their careers.
In order to address this issue, many universities and engineering schools have resorted
to surveys of desirable professional attributes, especially among employees, specialists and
practising engineers. There are many such surveys in the literature (e.g. Ning 1995, Morgan
et al. 1998), and some of the most often cited attributes are: (a) knowledge: engineering science
and technology, computer, administration, technology impacts on the environment and people,
etc.; (b) skills: communication and interpersonal skills, project development, problem analysis,
synthesis of solutions related to practices in use, teamwork, resources management, etc.; and
(c) attitudes: ethics, integrity and responsibility toward society and profession, concern for
the environment, initiative, entrepreneurialism, creativity, adaptability to constant changes,
motivation and interest in self-directed and lifelong learning, etc.
Although most engineering schools acknowledge the importance of fostering these
attributes – in Brazil, many of them can be found in the national engineering curriculum direc-
tives (Ministério de Educaç˜ao e Cultura 2002) – they have faced the difficult task of having
to incorporate an increasing body of knowledge and promote the development of skills and
attitudes without overburdening the curricula or extending the courses. Some authors, such
as Zabala (1998), suggest that these three categories, i.e. knowledge, skills and attitudes,
be simultaneously addressed in the classroom. In this direction, instructional methods such
as problem-based learning (PBL) could be beneficial, as Savin-Baden (2000) claims that it
is capable of providing students with the means to acquire knowledge as well as develop
desired skills and attitudes without the need for courses or workshops especially conceived to
this end.
2. Problem-based learning
Essentially, PBL is an instructional method characterized by the use of problems to encourage
students to acquire knowledge and develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. PBL
originated at the medical school of McMaster University, Canada, in the late 1960s for medical
education, but it is now possible to find examples of implementations in the whole educational
system. In higher education it has been successful in the teaching of diverse disciplines,
including engineering (e.g. Hadgraft 1999, Woods 2001, Edward 2001, Denayer et al. 2003).
Despite having been systematized not much more than 30 years ago, PBL is not a new
instructional approach. Many of its principles were proposed by educators and educational
researchers, such as Dewey, Piaget, Bruner, Ausubel, etc. (Dochy et al. 2003), long before.
Still, PBL may be considered innovative in the sense that it manages to combine and inte-
grate concepts from several educational theories and operationalize them in a coherent set
of activities. For instance, Gijselaers (1996) maintains that some activities involved in this
instructional method, such as problem identification, investigation and solution, teamwork, etc.
are indicated by cognitive psychology theory as the means to improve the teaching–learning
process.
Problem-based learning 139
2.1 The PBL process
Many educational activities could be considered PBL, such as projects and research. However,
the main characteristic that distinguishes PBL from other instructional approaches is that in
PBL an open-ended problem must precede the theory, motivate learning and promote the
integration of the concepts and skills needed for its solution. Originally implemented in the
whole curriculum, it is possible to find implementations of PBL as a partial educational
strategy, i.e. in a single course in an otherwise conventional curriculum or even in parts of
courses.
At any rate, all these different implementations of PBL have in common a process that may
be summed up as the following set of activities (Duch 2000, Barrows 2001): (1) a problem
is presented to the students, who in teams organize their ideas and try to define and solve it
with the knowledge they already have; (2) the students discuss the problem and take down
the learning issues about the aspects of the problem they do not understand; (3) the students
prioritize the learning issues and plan how, when, where and who will investigate them to share
them subsequently with the team; (4) when the students get together again, they explore the
former learning issues, integrating their new knowledge to the problem context; and (5) after
having finished the work with the problem, the students evaluate the process, themselves and
their peers so as to develop self-evaluation and constructive peer-evaluation skills, vital to
effective self-directed learning.
2.2 The role of teachers and students in PBL
The implementation of PBL usually implies some or the total restructuring of curricula and
courses, and promoting changes in the teaching–learning process and in the roles of students
and teachers. As learning takes place in a supportive and collaborative environment, PBL
requires different roles for these players as compared with those associated with conventional
education.
For instance, according to Barrows (2001), the teacher’s role is that of a facilitator, guide,
co-learner, tutor or professional consultant. In this instructional method, the teacher con-
ceives courses based on weakly structured real-world problems, empowers the students and
selects concepts that will encourage them to construct new knowledge, and helps the students
to delineate issues, formulate problems, explore alternatives and make effective decisions. On
the other hand, the students are supposed to take responsibility for their learning by working,
in teams, to identify, analyse and solve problems using knowledge from previous courses and
experiences, evaluate their own contributions and their peers’, and provide the teacher with
immediate feedback about the course so as to improve it continuously.
2.3 Instructional goals in PBL
However essential, problem-solving skills are not the only goals in PBL. In this instructional
method the knowledge constructed and the skills and attitudes developed as the students try
to solve the problems are more relevant than the solution per se. Barrows (1996) identified
some PBL instructional goals for medical education that seem to apply to the teaching of other
disciplines as well: the acquisition of an integrated knowledge base structured around real-life
problems and the development of an effective and efficient problem-solving process as well
as self-directed learning and teamwork skills.
Despite being mostly directed at undergraduate education, these goals may be equally
valid to postgraduate studies. It possible to suppose that they can assist in reaching the two
140 L. R. C. Ribeiro and M. da Graça N. Mizukami
statutory goals of postgraduate programmes in Brazil: to train researchers and to train higher
education teachers. The use of instructional methods such as PBL can be very valuable to the
development of researchers, since its process greatly resembles the scientific method. Not only
can its phases of problem definition and analysis, hypotheses generation, theory searching,
information sharing, presentation of results, synthesis of acquired knowledge, etc. contribute
to the researcher’s mastery of the knowledge under consideration, but also, according to
Kaufman and Mann (2001), to the development of the many communicative and interpersonal
skills required by scientific research.
As regards the education of higher education teachers, it may be assumed that the expe-
rience with an instructional method such as PBL can bring to light pedagogical alternatives
to the teacher-centred, knowledge-transmission models that the students have experienced
during their schooling process. In addition, the self-evaluation, peer-evaluation and process-
evaluation phases in PBL may help the students to acquire a reflective attitude toward teaching
and learning, which will promote the development of an effective teaching knowledge base.
This may be particularly important to postgraduate engineering programmes in Brazil, because
they seldom offer the students the possibility of acquiring didactical content or practice in
spite of the fact most of them come from Baccalaureates without pedagogical training. For
that reason, it is believed that the experience with a non-conventional instructional method
such as PBL can encourage the students to reflect about their practices, if they choose aca-
demic careers, so as not to reproduce the same pedagogical rituals they have experienced as
students.
With respect to a third, unofficial goal of postgraduate education in Brazil, i.e. to provide
students with the opportunity to specialize, improve their professional qualification or update
their current knowledge, which will used for purposes other than research and teaching, the
implementation of PBL and its gains should be equivalent to those previously mentioned for
undergraduate engineering students who will work for public or private organizations after
graduation. In short, one of the characteristics that makes PBL appealing to engineering and
higher education institutions, at the undergraduate or postgraduate levels, is the possibility of
accomplishing broader educational goals – not just assisting the students in the construction
of a sound scientific and technical knowledge base but also in the development of skills and
attitudes that will be beneficial to their chosen professional career.
3. Objectives
This work is part of a study on the viability of implementing PBL in a subject of an
engineering curriculum. Herein, the investigation focuses on how postgraduate engineer-
ing students evaluate this instructional approach, i.e. its capacity to accomplish the course
goals, its advantages and disadvantages, and some aspects of the class under this instructional
method.
4. Methodology
As happens with any educational implementations, the more engaged those involved in them
are, especially teachers and students, the greater their likelihood of success is. Thus, giving
voice to these stakeholders seems to be of fundamental importance to sustain their commitment
and promote their ownership. Notwithstanding, Savin-Baden (2000: 5) affirmed that ‘there
is little research to date that has explored the impact of problem-based learning upon staff
Problem-based learning 141
and students’ lives or examined the impact of implementing problem-based learning upon the
institution, or ...in an institution set up for lecture-based learning’.
As it was intended that this work would contribute in this direction, it adopted a qualitative
design, since Denzin and Lincoln (1994: 2) claimed that qualitative research is appropriate
when one wishes to study things in their natural settings, ‘attempting to make sense of, or inter-
pret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them’. This design was also adopted
because it is recommended, according to Bogdan and Biklen (1992), when the research is not
approached with specific hypotheses to test, and the type of data collected cannot be handled
easily by statistical procedures. Furthermore, this work also embraced a collaborative perspec-
tive (Cole and Knowles 1993) as it involved the joint work of researchers and course teacher
in the planning and implementation of the instructional method and, to some extent, in the
gathering and analysis of the data.
In order to address the research question, the PBL instructional method was developed
in an administration course of a postgraduate production-engineering curriculum of a public
university in São Carlos, São Paulo State, Brazil. The class was composed of 23 students
(17 male and six female, 24–50 years of age). The data presented in this work derive mainly
from classroom observations and an end-of-semester questionnaire (answered by 21 students,
herein referred to as S01, S02, etc.). In this questionnaire the students were asked, individually,
to evaluate the instructional method, its efficacy as to the attainment to the course goals
(knowledge, skills and attitudes) and its advantages and disadvantages, and to contribute with
improvement suggestions. Also, they were asked to give their opinions about aspects of the
class dynamics, such as presentation, evaluation and teamwork.
4.1 The intervention
The instructional method–based on the aforementioned set of PBL activities and principles–
was implemented in an administration theory subject, which comprised one 200-min weekly
meeting during 15 weeks. During this period, 12 problems were presented (one per week),
focusing on diverse topics. In the first class the students were given a course guide containing
the overall goals (development of a holistic view and administration-related competencies)
and specific goals (knowledge (administration theories, the diagnostic model, etc.), skills (oral
and written communication, problem-solving, interpersonal skills, etc.) and attitudes (respect
for others and their opinions, ethics, collaboration, abidance by rules established by the group,
etc.)) and an explanatory text about the instructional method, its principles and activities,
which were also discussed on the first day.
The students spontaneously divided themselves into groups of four or five, in which they
took, rotating every week, the roles of leader, scribe, spokesperson and participating mem-
ber(s). As of mid-term, these original teams were rearranged by the teacher so as to encourage
more professional relationships among the students and foster the exchange of teamwork
experiences in order to promote its efficacy and efficiency.
A cycle of the instructional method began in the second half of the weekly meeting
with the problem introduction followed by group discussions. In this discussion the teams
analysed the problem, hypothesized its possible causes, listed the concepts that could help
them solve it and planned their teamwork strategies. As there was no tutor individually
assigned to each team, during this group discussion phase the teacher went around the
room, helping the teams and answering pertinent questions. In the first half of the fol-
lowing meeting the scribes were to hand in a final report with their team’s results, which
were then presented orally by the spokespersons. The results were presented by all teams
142 L. R. C. Ribeiro and M. da Graça N. Mizukami
through seminars and, as of mid-term, posters and dramatizations as well. The teams’ pre-
sentations were followed by a collective closing, i.e. a debate among the students and the
teacher, and the latter’s synthesis about the topic in question. Finally, the teams were asked
to assess the problem and the instructional process, and the leaders, to evaluate in private
their own and their team member’s weekly performance by awarding marks (excellent,
good, regular and insufficient) and writing additional comments. The students’ final mark
derived from these evaluations and the teacher’s evaluations of the group work, reports and
presentations.
5. Results and discussion
All the students evaluated positively the instructional method used: ‘It was effective in making
the students search for new knowledge’ (S05) and ‘It impelled the students to look for the
concepts, understand them and apply them. It encouraged the students to interact and discuss
more, thus improving their skills and their understanding about the concepts’ (S11). The
general student acceptance and high satisfaction level found in this implementation are in
accordance with the literature, e.g. in the comparative work of Vernon and Blake (1993: 554)
‘no sample was found in which the students attitudes did not favour PBL to some degree’.
The same was observed by Albanese and Mitchell (1993), who believe that this is a strong
argument supporting PBL, as it can make learning more pleasurable and instil in the students
a joy of learning that will assist them in becoming lifelong learners.
5.1 On the advantages and disadvantages of the adopted instructional approach
The main advantages of this instructional method pointed out by the students were attributed
to the fact that it was motivating, made the class livelier and stimulated the development of
interpersonal and research skills, as stated by S19: ‘The class is more dynamic and, conse-
quently, easier to comprehend. The students learn how to search for the knowledge and ...to
work in teams (which is more complicated and harder to train)’, and S14: ‘The advantage is
that we don’t get the knowledge already digested, we have to search for it. Also, the sharing
of knowledge was very satisfying’. Other advantages mentioned by the students were ‘[The
opportunity] to learn how to ... solve a problem in practice’ (S20) and ‘The integration of
knowledge, and all the different perspectives about the topics we were exposed to [during the
course]’ (S02).
The requirement for student participation, fundamental in instructional methods such as
PBL, was ambiguously evaluated, as expressed by S06: ‘It is an interesting instructional
method, but it requires much more commitment and responsibility from the students. But this
is expected of postgraduate students’, and S13: ‘The disadvantage is that everybody must
be motivated for this instructional method to work properly’. It appears that this demand for
greater and constant student commitment also increased their workload and was too taxing on
their extra-class time, aggravated by the fact that only few of them were full-time students,
and that most of them had other subjects to attend to.
Indeed, the meta-analysis outcomes of Albanese and Mitchell (1993) suggest that PBL
students spend more hours per day studying than do conventional students due to its self-
directed learning nature. This aspect was noted by many students in this work and mentioned
as one of the disadvantages of the instructional method. In order to mitigate this effect they
suggested some alternatives, such as dividing the meeting into two weekly meetings (S21) and
allotting more of the class time for teamwork as they had difficulty in getting the members of
Problem-based learning 143
the team together (S14). These suggestions are in conformity with the studies of Kingsland
(1996), where the students indicated that they were more concerned about the timing of
activities and the availability of appropriate working spaces than about the increase in the
workload per se.
Another disadvantage of the instructional method cited was the pressure for participation
it placed on more introverted students: ‘The way the course was taught forces the students
to participate, and that can sometimes inhibit them due to individual characteristics’ (S02).
In this direction, Kaufman and Mann (2001) maintain that even though PBL was devised to
promote the improvement of the student’s communication and interpersonal skills, this should
happen while respecting their personality and comfort level. In the case of more introverted
students, these authors suggest, as occurred in this implementation, that the non-negotiable
requirements of the instructional method be clearly explained to the students, and that the
importance of developing and improving these skills be emphasized.
Likewise, some students considered the chief PBL feature, i.e. the problem preceding the
theory, to be a limitation of this instructional method: ‘The classmates who had never had any
contact with the administration theories had more difficulty in understanding the proposed
problems. They felt more insecure’ (S03). This aspect should be more evident in postgraduate
education, because the students may come from different Baccalaureates and, thus, have
different levels of proficiency in a given subject matter. Also, postgraduate students may
have different professional backgrounds, no former professional experience as well as other
characteristics accompanying such a wide student age bracket as the one in this study. However,
having prior knowledge about the topic in question is not a sine qua non in PBL. Indeed,
the students are supposed to construct new knowledge or question their previously acquired
knowledge as they try to solve the problem. Nor is it necessary that students have comparable
knowledge bases as the sharing of knowledge is encouraged by PBL as one way to optimize
learning.
The fact that PBL invites different views on the same topic – a positive feature of this
instructional method, because it leads students to ask new questions and confront their pre-
conceptions (Gijselaers 1996) – was also seen with reservation by some students, as illustrated
by S15’s comment: ‘Perhaps if the whole-class discussions were more directed to some main
points, the knowledge goals would be better accomplished ...But I don’t know whether that
would happen at the expense of other things, such as the main advantage of this instructional
method – the fact that we can see many aspects of the same problem. I don’t know ...’
Observing S15’s conflict, as well as S03’s concern about the necessity of previous knowl-
edge, one may suppose that they reflect their experience as students in more directive learning
environments, with logical, sequential methods of knowledge acquisition. In any event, the
adoption of alternative instructional methods such as PBL may cause conflicts, destabilize
learning strategies and give rise to student reactions, especially from students, according
to Stinson and Milter (1996), who have been successful in more teacher-centred, positivist
educational environments, the type of student likely to be found in Brazilian postgraduate
schools.
5.2 On the attainment of the course goals (knowledge, skills and attitudes)
The students evaluated that the overall goals of the course were reached. One of these goals
was to contribute to a more holistic view on administration and the understanding that its
theories cannot be dissociated from the historical context in which they were conceived.
This can be verified in the following excerpts: ‘It was important for we were able to study the
administration models in their historical context’ (S19), and ‘It was possible to identify the
144 L. R. C. Ribeiro and M. da Graça N. Mizukami
major administration trends, their causes and consequences within the socio-economic and
cultural context of mankind’s historical process’ (S07).
Analysing the goals separately, the instructional approach used may have promoted the
acquisition of knowledge in the way described by Barrows (1996), i.e. in an integrated way, con-
nected to problem-solving processes and structured around problems related to the students’
professional lives, as shown in the comments of S02: ‘The course provided for the applica-
tion of knowledge, otherwise just theoretical, to case studies [problems], which engendered
interesting discussions about each topic studied’, and S10: ‘When I studied administration in
undergraduate school I didn’t realize how this course would be useful in my professional life,
but now I understand the reach of this subject. It provided me, through all that was discussed
during the semester, with a general understanding about organizations and how we can solve
some problems that may happen to them’.
Nevertheless, as previously expressed by S03, some students believe that this instructional
approach may not be adequate when the students do not have some basic knowledge about
the subject matter: ‘The students with no basic knowledge in administration may not have
been capable of constructing the building that houses the administration theories and their
derivations due to this deficiency’ (S06). Although knowledge acquisition in PBL is still a
debatable issue, S06’s concern does not find support in the literature. The meta-analyses
carried out by Albanese and Mitchell (1993), Vernon and Blake (1993) and Dochy et al. (2003)
indicate that there is just a small difference in knowledge acquisition in favour of conventional
approaches. Besides being considered ‘small and not practically significant’ (Dochy et al.
2003: 550), this difference has been disputed by some authors, such as Stinson and Milter
(1996). They claimed that this difference is questionable because it derives from results of
standardized objective tests that measure only the students’ capacity to recall acontextual
concepts and because the results on which it was based denote implementation deficiencies
rather than those of the instructional method itself. Moreover, with respect to the ‘building
that houses the administration theories and their derivations’ (S06), Dochy et al. (2003: 551)
suggested that PBL students have a ‘better structured knowledge base, a consequence of the
attention for knowledge elaboration in PBL’.
On the other hand, some students saw this student knowledge heterogeneity as a positive
aspect and an opportunity to develop some skills, such as those related to teamwork: ‘The
search for knowledge and the sharing of it in heterogeneous groups (many students were not
from the administration area) was very satisfactory’ (S14), and ‘[We learnt] how to express
and defend our points of view’ (S14). The skills related to teamwork – often found in the
surveys of desirable attributes for engineers – were the most cited in this study, but the devel-
opment of other skills was also noted, e.g. ‘Researching, summarizing and presentation skills
were also accomplished’ (S12). On the whole, the students’ comments follow the findings
of the aforementioned meta-studies, e.g. Vernon and Blake (1993: 560) suggested that ‘the
skills of students exposed to PBL are superior to those of students educated in a traditional
curriculum’.
As regards the promotion of attitudes, some students maintained that some attitudes such as
respect for other opinions, adaptability, autonomy, collaboration, etc. may have been encour-
aged by the teaching approach, as the following excerpts illustrate: ‘[The instructional method
promoted] different attitudes according to the situation, learning to learn and the acquisition
of critical thinking about the topics in question’ (S04), and ‘Collaboration, time management,
attention to deadlines and care for classmates’ difficulties’ (S12). However, the comments of
some students denote that some attitudes, such as ethics and non-corporatism, may not have
been exercised all the time: ‘I was sincere and considered the team as an organization (at least
in this part of the course [second half]), but many students were worried about the marks, even
compromising to give Es [excellent] to everybody, regardless of their weekly performance.
Problem-based learning 145
I made a mistake when I gave myself an E for my work with the previous team because I was
not able to “influence” the final report as much I would like to have done’ (S15).
Attitudes such as the one exposed by S15 have deep social and cultural roots, and are
harder to destabilize. It was not expected that a one-semester course would be capable of
modifying strategies and practices shaped by many years of a schooling model in which
the primary goal is to get marks to pass. This limit was also perceived by S21, who, despite
acknowledging changes as regards some attitudes, was perspicacious about their extent: ‘With
respect to attitudes I believe that some people have seen changes regarding their posture in
the classroom (changes in the sense of understanding other approaches to the same problem
coming from other group members, and being more flexible toward them). As to changes in
individual attitudes, outside the classroom, this is a very personal, slow process’.
Anyhow, the instructional approach appears to have promoted some attitudes that will be of
assistance in the students’ professional life: ‘We realized that it is the student’s responsibility
to reach these goals [of the course]’ (S15), and ‘There was more flexibility, especially with
respect to learning how to listen to and relate to group members, trying to understand why
there was so much thinking differentiation, so many ways to act and interpret the organization
and its problems’ (S03).
5.3 About some aspects of the class under this instructional method
As explained previously, the instructional method, as it was implemented, consisted of several
phases, from the problem introduction to the collective closing. When asked to give their
opinion about these phases, some students chose to evaluate them together: ‘I do not have any
comments about the phases of the class, in light of the great discussions engendered by this
interesting instructional method’ (S16), and: ‘I did not find many problems in the instructional
method. I believe that the planning, research and group closing phases contributed a lot as they
simulate how the problem-solving process works in several organizations. The presentation
phase is great as it forces us to work on our communication, expression and presentation
skills’ (S17).
One of the most valued aspects of the instructional method, mentioned previously, was the
in-class and extra-class group work. The planning phase was considered to be fundamental
because it gave direction to the teamwork: ‘It promoted the problem definition, it established
all that had to be researched/studied as well as deadlines, tasks to be accomplished, etc.’
(S11). Nevertheless, the teamwork strategies devised by some groups, i.e. task division and
subsequent information sharing and synthesis, did not always count on every student’s acqui-
escence: ‘All group members should research everything – the problem should not be divided
up so that each student works on just one part’ (S06).
The majority of the students considered the group work as a discussion catalyst: ‘It stimulates
the participation of all students in enthusiastic discussions in which different perceptions and
points of view are aggregated’ (S06). However, there were some difficulties, sometimes
attributed to deficient teamwork planning: ‘There were some problems [in the group’s clos-
ing phase], which should have been better stipulated in the planning phase’ (S19). It seems
that time and distance – as many students lived out of town – were the main causes of these
difficulties, which led to the development of peculiar strategies: ‘We found that for groups
with members from distant towns the internet chat rooms were quite effective’ (S18). But
these strategies did not always work: ‘Sometimes the group’s research closing via e-mail
was complicated due to time availability and deficient participation of some members’ (S14),
which eventually led the teacher to address this issue by providing the students with time to
close the problem in the first 30 min of the weekly meetings, as suggested by the students.
146 L. R. C. Ribeiro and M. da Graça N. Mizukami
This procedure was acknowledged in the final evaluation: ‘The group closing in class ...was
much more satisfactory and productive’ (S14).
An important aspect of teamwork was the assignment and rotation of roles, which were
devised so as to mitigate the increase in the students’ individual workload as well as to foster
information sharing and the learning of teamwork skills. The evaluations of the majority of
the students indicate that this may have been reached: ‘Taking different roles contributed a
lot to the understanding of what teamwork is about’ (S05); ‘The established roles were very
effective so as no one took only the role with which they identified the most’ (S14); and
‘The rotation of roles promoted the learning of writing, presentation and leadership skills’
(S16). Notwithstanding, there is evidence that it did not always happen as planned: ‘The
roles were not clearly defined. Many times everybody acted as leaders, helped to write the
report, etc. and this “out-of-role” participation was very interesting’ (S21); ‘Everyone took
the responsibilities of their role, except for the leader, as no one supervised much’ (S10); ‘The
most defined roles were those of scribe and spokesperson. The leader and the participating
members took their week off (without generalizing, OK?)’ (S15). Apart from the attitude
issue these comments imply, the non-adherence to roles and the uneven participation of team
members observed in this study were also reported by Woods (2001) for tutorless groups, i.e.
facilitated only by the teacher. In this context it may be harder to empower students with the
process elements of this instructional method and to make them accountable to their peers
and the teacher. This author suggests, for when assigning individual tutors (e.g. other teachers
or more advanced students) to each team is not feasible, that the students’ contributions be
made visible by having them write weekly journals about their participation in the group’s
activities.
In this implementation, despite some students’attempts to cover up for other team members,
most of the time the weekly student performance evaluations were effective in providing
the teacher with information about individual progress. In addition, in order to avoid group
dysfunction, e.g. ‘free rides’ and ‘cliques’, which compromised the evaluations, the teacher
rearranged the teams at mid-term. This rearrangement was also intended to revitalize the
teamwork and prevent the students from sticking to preferred roles. To this end, at mid-term
the students were asked to evaluate their group members as regards their performances as
leaders, scribes and spokespersons in the first part of the course. Then the students were
grouped – without being told the criterion – according to the marks they were awarded so
that the ones with similar performance marks stayed together. Some students perceived this
change as positive: ‘With the second group the tasks were clearer and the teamwork was more
dynamic and effective’ (S13), and ‘The change of groups in the middle of the process was
very interesting. It was as if we had changed work environments within the same company
and experienced all that these changes involve’ (S14).
With respect to the group work presentations, i.e. presentation of problem diagnosis, solution
and theoretical basis to all classmates, the use of different modes (reports, seminars, posters
and dramatizations) ‘was adequate and effective’ (S06). The expedient of varying them as of
mid-term was welcomed as the repeated use of seminars in the first part of the course was
considered tedious by some students: ‘In the beginning, by the third week, when I noticed the
repetitive presentation scheme [seminars], I felt bored that I would be stuck with that until the
end of the semester. But then this changed and it had a big impact on us because everybody,
not just the scribe, had to draw conclusions and decide on presentation formats’ (S09).
S09’s comment also illustrates the fact that some students lose motivation after the novelty
phase is over. Although it is important to bring to the classroom a wide variety of options
for a given activity in order to promote the development of diverse skills, it is necessary to
investigate whether this lack of motivation does not derive from the students misunderstanding
the goals of the instructional method. Savin-Baden (2000) claimed that some students, and
Problem-based learning 147
some institutions, may see PBL just as ‘infotainment’, i.e. the combination of information
and entertainment. These students, perhaps early enthusiasts and resentful of monotonous,
conventional classes, may underestimate the work PBL requires. It is fundamental that stu-
dents understand from the beginning, and be constantly reminded throughout the course, that
although the class under this instructional method may be more dynamic, or even more fun,
its goal is to encourage the construction of knowledge, development of skills and promotion
of attitudes, and more often than not this demands effort and time.
Indeed, entertainment is not the purpose of presentations in PBL. On the contrary,
Rangachari (1996) believes it should be to stimulate the students to practise their commu-
nication skills and to teach them how to communicate effectively the knowledge they have
constructed, as noticed by S04: ‘The presentations provided for the development of capabilities
that some believed they did not have or would never develop’, and to offer opportunities for
the students to express their ideas individually, which occurred during the subsequent debates,
in the collective closing phase.
The collective closing phase was considered to be important by all students, as illustrated
by the excerpts: ‘It was the climax of the process’ (S05); and ‘The collective closing was
the most profitable phase of the process as we were able to discuss several views about the
same problem’ (S12). The teacher’s synthesis of the topic under consideration was highly
valued: ‘The collective closing was important because it validated the knowledge researched
and presented by the groups’(S04); ‘It is important because of the teacher’s comments’ (S21).
In PBL implementations such as this where the teacher acts as a facilitator of many groups
of newcomers to the instructional method, it is natural that the teacher role should differ
from that described by Barrows (2001) as they may have to intervene more often to ensure
that the students can distinguish important concepts from trivia. However, Allen et al. (1996)
recommended that this should be done with discretion so as not to hamper the students’
transition from passive to active learners. It may also be necessary to check whether these
comments just reflect their experience with instructional methods in which the teacher is seen
as the sole knowledge repository and provider, as the only person who has the final word that
can validate or discredit the knowledge constructed by the students.
The last phase of the process was the evaluation, which comprised the process evaluation
(problem, class dynamics, etc. done by the group) and the student performance (done by
the leaders, separately). On the whole, the students experienced difficulties in this phase:
‘I think it was interesting, but sometimes it was difficult to award marks because this is a very
subjective thing’ (S21). With a view to avoiding cursory evaluations and difficulties brought
about by subjectivity, Groh (2001) suggested that their frequency be decreased. This was not
done because, in this implementation, the self- and peer-evaluations were done by the leader
only, and as there were different leaders for every problem, the teacher assumed that every
student should undergo this experience. Groh (2001) also suggested that the students be given
immediate feedback based on their classmates’ constructive comments, which was done, even
though the teacher did not aim at any particular students.
Analysing the process evaluation separately, it was generally considered to be good: ‘It was
very important as it provided the students with the opportunity to express their points of view
about the class’ (S20). However, the way the students did this evaluation along the course,
rather mechanically, and the cursory comments they wrote in the end-of-semester questionnaire
indicate that these activities did not occur as expected. This evaluation procedure was intended
not only to promote the improvement of the course, but also to foster the development of the
students’– prospective teachers – reflective attitude about the teaching-learning process.
On the other hand, the students seem to have profited more from the performance evalu-
ation: ‘It was very valuable. It led the group to rethink their involvement with the tasks that
were individually assigned’. None the less, as mentioned previously, there is evidence that
148 L. R. C. Ribeiro and M. da Graça N. Mizukami
this activity was hampered by survival strategies shaped in more conventional educational
environments: ‘The idea that the performance evaluation could affect the final mark of any
team member made it less critical and realist. As the weeks went by the students became more
aware of the importance of the evaluation to the process’ (S12).
In order to counterbalance this effect, perceived during the semester, the teacher attempted
to show them the relevance and responsibility of this activity as well as the possibility of
experiencing real-life situations, which was acknowledged by S04: ‘It showed me the impor-
tance of self- and peer-evaluations, by trying to dissociate them from personal relationships
(an attitude that administrators and managers must have)’.
6. Concluding remarks
Despite the fact that the students’ evaluations are consonant with the literature and the overall
results point to the viability of using the instructional method in the context in question, its
implementation demands further investigation into some institutional issues as well as those
related to the staff member. Even though the students’statements indicate that the instructional
method adopted appears to have promoted the construction of knowledge and the development
of skills and attitudes, it is necessary to examine further whether it is effective in modifying
learning strategies and destabilizing attitudes toward the school and the teaching-learning
process forged in long years of an educational model centred on knowledge transmission by
the teacher.
In addition to acknowledging the impediments to a final conclusion, it is also important
to recognize that the education of researchers and teachers in all fields of knowledge is a
very complex process. It is not the intention of this work to simplify it or consider this
implementation sufficient to achieve this end. On the contrary, this work intends to contribute
other perspectives to the improvement of postgraduate engineering education and suggest
alternatives to the conventional pedagogical practices of colleges and universities.
Acknowledgements
The authors are indebted to the teacher who kindly volunteered to participate in this project
and to CAPES (the Brazilian agency for the improvement of higher education faculty and
staff) for financial support.
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About the authors
Luis Roberto C. Ribeiro is a doctoral student at the Education and Human Sciences Centre of
Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar), São Carlos, SP, Brazil. He majored in Materials
Engineering at UFSCar in 1983 and received his MSc degree in Production Engineering at
Universidade de São Paulo (USP), São Carlos, SP, Brazil, in 2000. Prior to the doctoral
programme, he worked for some years in the international purchase area of the industry,
and before then he was employed as an educator by SENAC (the national agency for the
development of commerce and services personnel). He is currently interested in problem-based
learning, engineering education and teacher development.
Maria da Graça N. Mizukami is Professor of Teacher Education and Teaching Instructional
Methodology at the Education and Human Sciences Centre of Universidade Federal de São
Carlos (UFSCar), São Carlos, SP, Brazil, where she has worked since 1981. She received her
BA degree in pedagogy at Universidade Estadual Paulista in 1970 and spent the following
4 years specializing in didactics at Karl Ruprecht Universität, Heidelberg, Germany. She
got her MA and PhD degrees at Pontifícia Universidade Católica (PUC), Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, in 1978 and 1983, respectively. She also did her postdoctoral studies at Santa Clara
University, California, in 1991. Professor Mizukami has published several papers and books
on teacher education and teaching-learning processes and is an active participant of congresses
and symposia in Brazil and abroad.
