Review the rubric to make sure you understand the criteria for earning your grade. This activity is due by the end of Module One. Read the following articles: H

Chapter 1

Learning Theories and Problem-Based Learning

Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver and Catherine Eberbach

1.1 Introduction

PBL is a learner-centered instructional method in which students learn through

solving ill-structured problems (Barrows, 2000; Hmelo-Silver, 2004; Torp & Sage, 2002). Students work in collaborative groups to identify what they need to learn in order to solve a problem. They engage in self-directed learning and then apply their new knowledge to the problem and reflect on what they learned and the effectiveness of the strategies employed. The teacher acts to facilitate the learning process rather than to provide knowledge. Goals of PBL include helping students develop (1) flexible knowledge, (2) effective problem-solving skills, (3) effective self-directed learning skills, (4) effective collaboration skills,

and (5) intrinsic motivation. This chapter discusses the nature of learning in PBL and examines the empirical evidence supporting it. There is considerable research on the first three goals of PBL but little on the last two (Hmelo-Silver, 2004). Moreover, minimal research has been conducted outside medical and gifted education. In this chapter, we explore the goals of PBL and the learning theories that explain how PBL might achieve these goals.

The first goal of PBL, constructing flexible knowledge, goes beyond having students learn simple facts; flexible knowledge integrates information across multiple domains in long-term memory. Such knowledge is coherently orga-

nized around deep principles in a domain (Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981). Moreover, this knowledge needs to be conditionalized, that is, people should understand when and why knowledge is useful. Flexible knowledge develops as people apply their knowledge in a variety of problem situations (CTGV, 1997; Kolodner, 1993).

Helping students develop usable knowledge and skills requires embedding learning in problem-solving contexts (e.g., Gallagher, Stepien, & Rosenthal, 1992; Hmelo, 1998; Hmelo, Holton, & Kolodner, 2000; Perfetto, Bransford, &

C.E. Hmelo-Silver (*) Department of Educational Psychology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

S. Bridges et al. (eds.), Problem-Based Learning in Clinical Education, Innovation and Change in Professional Education 8, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-2515-7_1, � Springer ScienceþBusiness Media B.V. 2012

3

Franks, 1983). Discussing problems in a PBL group (prior to researching learning issues) activates relevant prior knowledge and facilitates the processing of new information (Schmidt, DeGrave, DeVolder, Moust, & Patel, 1989). Students can better construct new knowledge when they can relate it to what they already know.

The second goal of developing effective problem-solving skills refers to the ability to apply appropriate metacognitive and reasoning strategies. Different strategies may be appropriate for different domains and for different problems. For example, hypothetical-deductive reasoning is an appropriate strategy for medical problem solving whereas analogical or case-based reasoning may be appropriate in many design domains such as architecture. Metacognitive skills refer to the executive control processes of planning one’s problem solving, monitoring one’s progress, and evaluating whether one’s goals have been met (Schoenfeld, 1985).

Metacognitive strategies are also important for the third goal of developing lifelong learning skills: being a self-regulated learner (Ertmer & Newby, 1996; Zimmerman, 2002). There are several processes involved. First, learners must have a metacognitive awareness of what they do and do not understand. Second, they must be able to set learning goals for themselves, identifying what they need to learn more about for the problem they are solving. Third, they must be able to plan how to achieve their goals. Finally, as they implement their plan, learners must evaluate whether or not their goals have been attained.

The fourth goal of being a good collaborator means effectively participating in a small group. This encompasses establishing common ground, resolving discrepancies, negotiating the actions that a group is going to take, and coming to an agreement (Barron, 2003). This requires open exchange of ideas and engagement of all group members (Cohen, 1994; Wenger, 1998).

The fifth goal of PBL is to help learners become intrinsically motivated, which occurs when learners work on a task for their own satisfaction, interest, or challenge. Determining what is engaging is easy for medical students; they all share the goal of becoming physicians. Similarly, gifted high school students tend to be highly motivated and have cognitive skills that allow them to confidently tackle complex tasks. Determining appropriate problems for less knowledgeable students requires that problem designers understand what is interesting for a heterogeneous group of students with varying levels of prior knowledge and provides a moderate challenge without being overwhelming (Blumenfeld, Kempler, & Krajcik, 2006).

1.2 Features of PBL

Several features of PBL are important in achieving the goals. These include the overall PBL tutorial process, facilitation, problems themselves, collaboration, self-directed learning, and post-problem reflection. A PBL tutorial session starts by presenting a group of students with minimal information about a

4 C.E. Hmelo-Silver and C. Eberbach

complex problem (Barrows, 2000). From the outset, students must engage in

questioning to obtain additional problem information; they may also gather

facts by doing experiments or other research (Torp & Sage, 2002). For example,

when middle-school children were asked to build artificial lungs, they per-

formed experiments to determine how much air the lungs had to displace

(Hmelo et al., 2000). At several points in the problem, students typically

pause to reflect on the data they have collected so far, generate questions

about that data, and hypothesize about underlying causal mechanisms that

might help explain it. The students then identify concepts they need to learn

more about in order to solve the problem (i.e., ‘‘learning issues’’). After con-

sidering the problem with their naive knowledge, the students divide and

independently research the learning issues they have identified. They then

regroup to share what they learned, reconsider their hypotheses and/or generate

new hypotheses in light of their new learning, as shown in the cycle (Fig. 1.1).

When completing the task, learners reflect on the problem in order to abstract

the lessons learned, as well as how they performed in self-directed learning and

Problem Scenario

Identity Facts

Identify Knowledge Gaps

Engage in Self- Directed Learning

Apply New Knowledge to

Problem

Evaluate Adequate Knowledge? Problem Solved?

Generate Hypotheses

Fig. 1.1 The PBL cycle

1 Learning Theories and Problem-Based Learning 5

collaborative problem solving. They evaluate their understanding of the pro- blem as well as their progress toward a solution.

In the traditional PBLmodel, students use whiteboards to help scaffold their problem solving (Hmelo-Silver, 2004). The whiteboard may be divided into four columns to help the learners record where they have been and where they are going. The four columns scaffold learning by helping to communicate the PBL process (Hmelo-Silver, 2006) and help structure and guide the group’s learning process (Dillenbourg, 2002). The whiteboard serves as a focus for negotiation of the problem for students to co-construct knowledge. The Facts column includes information that the students gather from the problem. The Ideas column serves to keep track of evolving hypotheses about solutions. The students place questions for further study into the Learning Issues column. They use the Action Plan to keep track of plans, problem solving, or finding more information. The use of the whiteboard helps students externalize their problem solving and allows them to focus onmore difficult aspects of their task. It provides a model of a systematic approach to problem solving and supports student planning and monitoring as they identify what needs to go up on the board, and later, to consider what needs to be removed. This should enhance students’ problem-solving skills (and subsequent transfer of knowledge and skills to new situations).

PBL supports knowledge construction as students activate their prior knowledge in initial discussions (Schmidt et al., 1989). It also supports social construction of knowledge as learners work in small groups using inquiry skills to solve real-world problems (Greeno, Collins, & Resnick, 1996). For example, medical students learn by solving real patient problems using the inquiry skills of medical practice. From a cognitive perspective, organized learning experi- ences foster students’ understanding of concepts through problem-solving activities, but from a situative perspective, social interactions are the source of knowledge construction. This latter perspective acknowledges that social practices support the development of students as capable learners competent in both their disciplinary knowledge and as problem solvers (Lampert, 2001). Before considering the relationship between the goals of PBL and different learning theories, we first consider what we know about several important aspects of PBL: the role of the problem; the role of the facilitator; collaboration; and reflection.

1.2.1 The Role of the Facilitator

Because PBL situates learning in meaningful problems and makes key aspects of expertise visible, it is a good example of the cognitive apprenticeship model (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989), where the facilitator plays a key role in modeling the problem-solving and self-directed learning skills neededwhen self- assessing one’s reasoning and understanding. In PBL, the facilitator is an expert learner, modeling good strategies for learning and thinking rather than

6 C.E. Hmelo-Silver and C. Eberbach

providing content knowledge. Facilitators progressively fade their support as students become more experienced with PBL until finally learners adopt the questioning role. The facilitator is responsible both for moving the students through the various stages of PBL and for monitoring the group process – assuring that all students are involved so that they can both externalize their own thinking and comment on each other’s thinking (Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2006, 2008; Koschmann, Myers, Feltovich, & Barrows, 1994). The PBL facili- tator guides the development of higher-order thinking skills by encouraging students (and the group) to justify their thinking, and externalizes self-reflection by directing appropriate questions to individuals. Expert facilitators accom- plish these learning and performance goals through the use of a variety of strategies that often involve the use of open-ended and metacognitive question- ing (Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2008). These strategies build on student thinking and help catalyze and focus discussions in subtle but productive ways.

1.2.2 The Role of the Problem

There are several characteristics of good PBL problems (Barrows & Kelson, 1995; Gallagher et al., 1992; Kolodner, Hmelo, &Narayanan, 1996). In order to promote flexible thinking, problems should be complex, ill structured, and open ended; to support intrinsic motivation, they must also be realistic and connect with learners’ experiences. Good problems provide feedback that allows stu- dents to evaluate the effectiveness of their knowledge, reasoning, and learning strategies. Such problems foster conjecture and argumentation. Problem solu- tions should be complex enough to stimulate students’ need to know. Good problems help students become engaged right from the beginning and allow them to get started based on their initial understanding. Generative problems often require multidisciplinary solutions. For example, clinical problems might require ideas from physiology, anatomy, and pharmacology. This allows stu- dents to see how different kinds of knowledge are useful tools for problem solving.

The ill-structured problems used in PBL can serve as the basis for high levels of problem-relevant collaborative interaction; however, groups may need good facilitation to make this interaction productive (Kapur & Kinzer, 2007; Van Berkel & Schmidt, 2000). Although in studies of PBL the predomi- nant type of ill-structured problem has been diagnosis, other types of pro- blems have been used successfully. Walker and Leary (2009) found the greatest achievement effects were for problems that were classified as design problems and strategic performance problems. A design problem might ask learners to design artificial lungs or an instructional plan. A strategic perfor- mance problem might ask learners to act in complex, real-time situations in which they have to employ and adapt tactics as appropriate to situational demands.

1 Learning Theories and Problem-Based Learning 7

1.2.3 Collaborative Learning in PBL

Collaborative problem-solving groups are a key feature of PBL. One assump-

tion of PBL is that the small group structure helps distribute the cognitive load

among the members of the group, taking advantage of group members’ dis-

tributed expertise by allowing the whole group to tackle problems that would

normally be too difficult for each individual alone (Pea, 1993; Salomon, 1993).

In PBL, students generally divide the learning issues and become ‘‘experts’’ in

particular topics. Research suggests that the small group discussions and debate

in PBL sessions enhance higher-order thinking and promote shared knowledge

construction (Blumenfeld, Marx, Soloway, & Krajcik, 1996; Vye, Goldman,

Voss, Hmelo, & Williams, 1997). In PBL groups, students often work together to construct collaborative

explanations, but usually need support to collaborate well. In the traditional

PBL model, a facilitator helps accomplish this. In the absence of a dedicated

facilitator, several techniques foster productive collaboration including scripted

cooperation, reciprocal teaching, guided peer questioning, and the use of

student roles (Herrenkohl & Guerra, 1998; King, 1999; O’Donnell, 1999;

Palincsar & Herrenkohl, 1999).

1.2.4 Reflection: Supporting Enduring Understanding and Transfer

Reflecting on the relationship between doing and learning is needed to support

the construction of extensive and flexible knowledge (Salomon & Perkins,

1989). Reflection is necessary to help learners understand that the tasks are in

the service of the questions they have asked, and that these questions arise from

the learning goals they have set for themselves (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1989).

Reflection helps students to (1) relate their new knowledge to their prior under-

standing; (2) purposefully abstract knowledge; and (3) understand how the

strategies might be reapplied. PBL incorporates reflection throughout the

tutorial process and when completing a problem. Students periodically reflect

on the adequacy of their hypothesis list and their own knowledge relative to the

problem. On completion of a problem, students reflect on what they have

learned, how well they collaborated with the group, and how effective they

were as self-directed learners. As students make inferences that tie the general

concepts and skills to the specifics of the problem that they are working on, they

construct more coherent knowledge (Chi, Bassok, Lewis, Reimann, & Glaser,

1989). The reflection process in PBL is designed to help students make infer-

ences, identify gaps in their thinking, and prepare them to transfer problem-

solving strategies, self-directed learning strategies, and knowledge to new

situations.

8 C.E. Hmelo-Silver and C. Eberbach

Often groups need help to reflect on their learning (Hmelo-Silver, 2000). A dedicated facilitator can support student reflection but in larger groups, other techniques may be helpful. One approach is the use of structured journals (e.g., Puntambekar & Kolodner, 1998). These kinds of approaches need evi- dence of their effectiveness before advocating their widespread incorporation into PBL models.

To understand how PBL achieves it goals, we turn to theories of learning.We argue that by understanding these theories, we can better understand how students learn in PBL and use this understanding to determine which features of PBL are most important for particular goals and how PBLmight be adapted under different circumstances. Neither information processing nor social con- structivist theories alone provides a sufficient account of learning in PBL. Having an understanding of the theoretical foundations of PBL is thus impor- tant in designing and facilitating productive PBL experiences.

1.3 Theoretical Foundations

1.3.1 Information Processing Foundations

The earliest explanations of the benefits of PBL were drawn from information processing theory (Schmidt, 1993). From this perspective, a key benefit of PBL is that group discussion helps learners to activate prior knowledge. Schmidt et al. (1989) demonstrated that discussion of a case prior to reading about content served to activate prior knowledge and facilitate processing new infor- mation. In addition, PBL discussions provide opportunities for learners to elaborate upon their understanding and connect their new learning to knowl- edge stored in long-term memory. Beyond these mechanisms, a key idea from information processing is the notion of transfer-appropriate processing, which states that when people learn in a problem-solving context, they should be able to retrieve that information when it is needed (Adams et al., 1988). Spontaneous transfer of knowledge and strategies is generally difficult to achieve, but with increasing practice and expertise, the likelihood of transfer is improved (Novick, 1988; Novick & Holyoak, 1991). Transfer often fails because problem solvers fail to retrieve an appropriate analog. Because in PBL the knowledge is encoded in a problem-solving context, students should bemore likely to retrieve that knowledge when faced with future problems, something that is especially important to professional education. In these settings, students are often learn- ing foundational disciplines (e.g., basic sciences for medicine and psychology in teacher education). The goal for learning is often not to learn these disciplines in isolation, but to apply disciplinary knowledge to problem solving. Because PBL students learn domain knowledge (the basic biomedical sciences in the case of medical students), reasoning strategies, and self-directed learning strategies in the context of solving problems, it is reasonable to expect transfer-appropriate processing mechanisms to come into play.

1 Learning Theories and Problem-Based Learning 9

A more general cognitive analysis of PBL suggests that as students are presented with problems, they access prior knowledge, establish a problem space, search for new information to help reach their problem-solving goals, and in the process, they may construct new mental representations or restruc- ture existing representations that include the conditions in which the knowl- edge might be used (Anderson, 1982). This process involves developing meta- cognitive awareness of one’s progress on both learning and problem solving (Hmelo & Lin, 2000).

As Hmelo-Silver, Chernobilsky, and DaCosta (2004) noted, research in PBL and basic cognitive research show that (1) students who learn knowledge in a problem-solving context such as PBL are more likely to retrieve and transfer their knowledge to new problems; and (2) students who learn reasoning and self-directed learning strategies in a problem-solving context and have extensive practice in applying them aremore likely to retrieve and apply these strategies in new problems. Beyond these purely internal cognitive mechanisms, the white- board serves as an extension of memory that can reduce cognitive load.

Information processing theory provides some foundations for understand- ing what students learn, but less about how they learn, particularly in the social context and for that it is important to consider social constructivist and socio- cultural foundations of PBL.

1.3.2 Social Constructivist and Sociocultural Foundations

Contemporary learning theories view learning as a fundamentally social activ- ity (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Palincsar, 1998). Social constructivist theories emphasize the importance of learners being actively engaged in their own learning as they engage in meaningful tasks (Collins, 2006). A key aspect of these theories is the notion of scaffolding. There is an extensive body of research on scaffolding learning in problem-based environments (e.g., Collins et al., 1989; Davis & Linn, 2000; Golan, Kyza, Reiser, & Edelson, 2002). Scaffolding in PBL allows learners to engage in complex problems that might otherwise be beyond their present abilities. Scaffolding makes learning more tractable for students by changing complex and difficult tasks in ways that make these tasks accessible, manageable, and within students’ zone of proximal development (Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978). Quintana et al. (2004) conceived of scaffolding as a key element of cognitive apprenticeship, whereby students become increas- ingly accomplished problem-solvers given structure and guidance frommentors who scaffold students through coaching, task structuring, and hints, without explicitly giving students the final answers. An important feature of scaffolding is that it supports students’ learning of how to do the task as well as why the task should be done that way (Hmelo-Silver, 2006).

Scaffolding is often distributed in the learning environment, across the curriculum materials or educational software, the teachers or facilitators, and the learners themselves (Puntambekar & Hubscher, 2005). Teachers play a

10 C.E. Hmelo-Silver and C. Eberbach

significant role in scaffoldingmindful and productive engagement with the task,

tools, and peers. They guide students in the learning process pushing them to think deeply and model the kinds of questions that students need to be asking themselves, thus forming a cognitive apprenticeship (Collins et al., 1989, Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2006).

PBL is also replete with psychological tools that support student learning and engagement. Sociocultural theories emphasize the role of tools in mediating learning (Engeström, 1993; Kozulin, 1998; Lave &Wenger, 1991). Understand- ing the role of such tools is central to understanding learning. For example,

students in the study reported in Hmelo (1998) were more successful in their problem solving because they could use their science knowledge and the strate- gies that they developed as tools for their thinking. Psychological tools are

those symbolic artifacts – signs, symbols, tests, formulae, graphic-symbolic devices – that help individuals master their own ‘natural’ psychological functions of perception, memory, attention, and so on and serve as a bridge between individual acts of cognition and the symbolic sociocultural prerequisites of these acts (Kozulin, 1998, p. 1).

Tools such as these mediate individual and collaborative activity. In studies of learning processes, the role of several kinds of psychological tools is exam- ined: conceptual tools, such as knowledge, strategies, and language; and repre- sentational tools that students construct (and that may be used to scaffold and guide their learning).

Knowledge, strategies, and language help mediate goal-directed activity by helping one make inferences and reason about one’s activities. Students use

language as a tool to help them construct meaning (Vygotsky, 1978). As Lave and Wenger (1991) pointed out, mastery of language and discourse allows students to progress in becoming participants in communities of practice.

PBL provides many opportunities for students to engage with conceptual tools such as language and domain knowledge. Adequate language practice is essential for being a part of a community of practitioners – a group of people who share goals, ideas, and interests to solve similar problems. Through parti- cipation and discussion, practitioners have a chance to appropriate and manip-

ulate newly acquired vocabulary, negotiate word meanings, and interact with other members of the community (Brown et al., 1993). Such discourse is central to the PBL process. As students work in small groups, they have opportunities to share what they have learned and discover what they still need to learn. This kind of talkmakes learners’ thinking visible to the group, which then allows it to become an object that is open for discussion and revision. This is an ideal environment for students to appropriate the conceptual language of a discipline

as they practice it and have a chance to learn from their mistakes. Besides language, one’s knowledge and strategies can serve as important

tools for problem solving. In PBL, students appropriate new knowledge and strategies as they engage with problems. This is distinct from acquiring content knowledge because this knowledge carries an instrumental value (Kozulin, 1998). Knowledge is only a tool if ‘‘it is appropriated as a generalized instrument

1 Learning Theories and Problem-Based Learning 11

capable of organizing individual cognitive and learning processes in different contexts and in applications to different tasks’’ (Kozulin, 1998, p. 86). Students in PBL curricula use science concepts and disciplinary reasoning strategies to produce good-quality explanations, which suggests that these concepts and strategies function as psychological tools (Hmelo, 1998; Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2008). In addition, the hypothesis-driven strategies that PBL students use in their reasoning also serves to support their self-directed learning because they can use their hypotheses as a way to evaluate the relevance of new information for the problem they are trying to solve (Hmelo & Lin, 2000). For example, a learning issue related to a disease leads students to consider abnormal lab values in a context rather than as an isolated feature such as in this example ‘‘. . .the physiology of the adrenal gland: what are the compounds which it synthesizes, and what are the systemic effects of their release into blood in abnormally elevated levels?’’ (Hmelo & Lin, 2000, p. 237).

In addition to the conceptual psychological tools, representations can serve as tools for thinking. Different representations afford and constrain social knowledge construction in several ways (Pea, 1993; Roth, 1998). First, repre- sentations serve as a shared concrete referent for members of a group and provide a common focus for negotiation. Second, the structure of the represen- tation can guide student discussions (Suthers & Hundhausen, 2001). In PBL, several representational artifacts may be constructed. One representation is the formal structured PBL whiteboard with its facts, ideas, or hypotheses, learning issues, and action plan. This helps guide the discourse to consider certain issues and not others. The whiteboard serves as an external memory for the students – it reminds them of their ideas, both solidified and tentative, as well as hypoth- eses that they need to test. One ritualized aspect of the PBL tutorial is ‘‘cleaning up the boards’’ (Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2006). This occurs at several times, but especially after students have discussed what they learned from the resources they used for self-directed learning. In this event, students evaluate each of their hypotheses, look at how the hypotheses fit with the accumulated data, and how that meshes with what they have brought in from their self- directed learning. The discussions of what hypotheses are still worth consider- ing and which ones are more or less likely lead to substantive discussions that are centered aroundwhat needs to be filled in on the whiteboard. Students often discuss how hypotheses should be ranked or when they should be added or deleted. Similar discussions revolve around learning issues (Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2006, 2008). The formal whiteboards serve as a space for students to negotiate their ideas.When students mark something as needing to be placed on the whiteboard, it suggests that the group agrees that what is written on the board is worth paying attention to. The use of the whiteboard is a fluid part of the tutorial that supports reasoning, knowledge construction, and self-directed learning as students use it to remind them of what they are considering, what they know, and what they still need to learn. Other representations students may construct are less formal representations such as flow charts, concept maps, and diagrams (see Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2006, 2008).

12 C.E. Hmelo-Silver and C. Eberbach

1.4 Discussion

PBL has its theoretical foundat

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