I come from a traditional school background with one teacher screaming at 42 students (still we managed to learn something). Years later, at the University of Linkoping I learned the Problem based learning (PBL) method. First as a student myself and then as a mentor in base groups. It was a very exciting experience opening a door to another way of teaching.
What fascinates me about the PBL method is the dynamism of the discussions and that you have to become “a master” in the art of generating questions :-)… not any question but the key questions that arouse curiosity and thirst for reading an extra page in the textbook.
Moderating PBL groups is also difficult: you would like to interrupt a discussion but then you have to remember that every group has a “tempo”. Moreover assessing the students is not that straightforward when there a lot is up to self-discipline and happens at home.
And yet a step forward: PBL group online??? How is going to be? I don’t really know but I am looking forward to this ONL162!
Gizeh_ONL 
Hi Gizeh,
Interesting reading about your experiences. I have not worked more than about six months with PBL in a campus setting, but I have come to enjoy it very much since I see the students grow in the search for knowledge. It will be really interesting trying this out via the net too.
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Thanks Karin for your comment!
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Hi Gizeh, I agree strongly with your sentence: “PBL is about mastering the art of generating questions”. Happy that you experiences already PBL. Looking forward to work with you. Grz Francisca
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Thanks Francisca!
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This is interesting Gizeh…are you thinking synchronous PBL discussion (via videoconferencing) or asynchronous (via discussion boards)? By the way for anything regarding how to humanize online teaching I recommend following Michelle Pacansky-Brock http://brocansky.com/blog/ I consider her my mentor in online teaching.
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Thanks Anna, This course Online Networked Learning is both synchronous and has some asynchronous activities as I understand. We just started this monday by creating the blog and introducing ourselves. I am part of a PBL group and we will discuss different topics along 5 weeks. I will write comments in my blog about what I’ve learned after each meeting. Yes, I am following Michelle and her blog is super interesting. There I found a lot of useful tools and reflexions.
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Excellent start to the Online PBL forum. I agree with you, asking the right questions to create more questions. Such fun. 🙂
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Gizeh, I think your work and background with PBL will help us tremendously in this journey of ours. I look forward to working with you and to learning from you especially as I have not “taught” using PBL as an approach.
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