After PBL today I had a chat with my tutor. My choice, my decision.
I feel as though I'm swimming upstream with the whole concept of Problem Based Learning - or at least how my medical school has interpreted it.
Maybe I'm being just too hard on myself, but I feel as though I'm losing the plot with it sometimes. I feel like I'm missing some of the learning objectives. And don't even get me started on how we present work; that's just one flaming headache after another.
My tutor's advice: stick with it, plan what you want to write (one of my biggest failings..) and only use 2 texts maximum. Apparently using 5 or 6 plus the internet, as I had been doing makes for long and tedious work. No kidding there.
Hopefully it will all suddenly click this week. Otherwise it could be a very long 3 and a half years...
4 comments:
Your tutor is absolutely right. I'm doing a PBL course myself and find the best way is to find a simple text for each subject that suits you (or in my case, all the crash courses) - and by basic I mean something like Tortora for most of anatomy and physiology, Gray's for more anatomy, pharmacology at a glance does for preclinical stuff, crash course immunology... you get the drift. I tend to use these plus the crash courses and do just fine - in fact very well, madly enough. If you understand the basics well, you can't fail an exam really... The secret is to read the chapters FIRST then look at the objectives and fill in the blanks.
As for PBL groups, it's hell. Particularly presenting work. My current group have abandoned that and we're just doing issues really, which helps a lot, although my last group did feedback handouts (max of two A4 sides on each set of objectives) and that was grand too.
Best of luck x
PBL sucks - fact.
However, the best way to make the most of it is to stick to a max of two different books, otherwise you just get bogged down.
In reality you don't need to know 6 books worth as most of it is the same anyway and what isn't in the books isn't worth using brain space to remember.
Keep at it.
Some of the PBL tutors here have actually promoted the use of wikipedia to get it done!!
Just not to use it in coursework...
I found reading different things helped me learn more but didn't help generate an answer for PBL style work.
What I found most useful was rather than just reading one thing (and missing out on other/better texts) was to read around it, then bat it out with friends. Other medics (not necessarily your PBL group) chewing the cud over coffee with you could, fairly quickly, clarify thoughts.
Worked for me, anway :-)
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