USING
PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING IN GRADUATE SCHOOL CURRICULUM TO TEACH CURRENT
CONCEPTS IN IMMUNOLOGY
Benjamin L.. Clarke and Lorentz
.E. Wittmers*, Departments of Medical Microbiology & Immununology
and Physiology, School of Medicine, University of Minnesota-Duluth,
MN 55812
U. S. A.
Within graduate-level education, students are expected to
peruse current literature and in the process to develop an ability to sift
and sort through enormous amounts of information.
Additionally, students are expected to critically evaluate the
literature, create their own models and construct hypotheses.
These desirable traits need to be learned by actively doing, not
passively listening to didactic lectures.
However, credible delivery of this enormous informational content
is typically beyond the skills of a single faculty member.
Current teaching methods using faculty teams to deliver high impact
lectures can be flawed by a lack of continuity in teaching styles, plus
lecturing is not conducive to student participation.
A seminar club or class is a second method of instruction to cover
a broad range of topics, but these forums tend to lack structure, may not
provide much new information, and could lose student engagement if the
cohort has a broadly dispersed set of interests.
An alternative approach to presenting advance biomedical topics is
to use Problem-Based Learning (PBL). We
tested this hypothesis using a graduate course in Advanced Immunobiology
taught by faculty at the
University
of
Minnesota Duluth
,
School
of
Medicine
as an offering to advanced undergraduate and graduate students.
The goal of this offering is to emphasize an in-depth analysis of
current literature related to host-defenses and disorders of the immune
system. The course was taught
as an elective for three years and involved a cohort of 5-8 students each
year. Initially, the students
were introduced to the process and goals of PBL.
Subsequently the cohort was presented with 2-3 different problems
and provided 5-6 weeks to study and research the problem.
At the conclusion the students prepared written reports for
evaluation. Our observations
are that students utilizing the PBL approach were motivated to cover large
amounts of literature and were enthusiastic towards discussing the
material. The student
evaluations of the PBL experience were very positive.
In general they had never worked so hard, or had so much fun for so
few credits.
home
