Implementing problem-based learning (PBL) into your own curriculum can seem difficult at first. This week, I wanted to explain some of the processes that I have thought about, conducted research on, and experimented/implemented throughout my experience. My main focus this week is going to be on a phased implementation and structure for PBL and it is something that should be considered when you decide to implement this into your profession. What do you mean by that? If you did any additional research form my PBL post you will see that PBL (sometimes referred to as scenario-based learning) takes a ton of resources (manpower and time) to implement successfully into a program. Don’t let that discourage you from putting it into practice with your pedagogy and andragogy teachings though… I am here to help give some ideas on how to implement what we are talking about.
Phasing is something that you would pickup from any project management class and that you have probably already done in your workplace. Phasing for PBL would probably be similar but here is my take on it. PBL can be implemented in three phases: 1) Baseline Knowledge 2) Part-Task Training 3) Scenario Training. The best thing about this, is that there are several different ways to implement the phases but I will give you my preferred method that actually keeps your students engaged and has been most successful in my experience.
Baseline Knowledge
This phase is extremely important however, care should be taken in making sure that you are not overloading your students. What I mean by this is that you want to make sure that you are not going to burn out your students with “knowledge” before they have to apply the skills. ***DISCLAIMER- this is focused on andragogy and your adult learners vice your pedagogical learners. While some theories can be applied within the field of pedagogy my experiences and data are all coming from a andragogical setting.***
This entire phase is literally making sure that your students have received the cognitive and affective instruction so that they have an understanding of the data and are ready to implement it so they may begin to value it in its application. That’s a big ask right? This can actually be easier than you think if you remember that the concept of “chunking” in Human Performance Improvement. That concept, to paraphrase, states that the human brain is capable of handling a finite number of chunks of data at a time before it is overloaded and missing information. Introducing phases allows us to help handle the chunks of knowledge our brain can handle. This is due to our brains pathway of learning new data it must accomplish a few different things. Again, to not get into too much detail, basically the brain first needs to decide whether it already knows part of the data or not to determine if it can access some data stored in long-term memory to relate it to the new data being presented. If not, it knows it needs to start paying attention in order to transfer that data from short to long-term memory for maximum capacity for data intake on the front-end.
That entire process of transfer can be accomplished by the teacher in a learner analysis to decide if this is going to be a near or far-transfer of knowledge. Near-transfer is easily relatable to information already stored in long-term memory and only needs slight modifications to get the point across. Far-transfer refers to the ability to teach something brand new to a student that they have no prior background on at all. An example would be teaching two different students how to shoot a Glock pistol. Student one has shot a beretta before. So they have experience shooting a pistol. The pistol they shot however, has a double trigger, hammer and decocking lever. The glock has none of those features. So you would spend your time teaching the differences between the two safety features and explain the lighter trigger pull versus the beretta and the knowledge would be easily understood by student one, in theory, and they would be able to get to task completion sooner than student two—this is near-transfer. Student two, on the other hand has no experience shooting a pistol at all. So, you will have to start off with A LOT more information for this student as they have no experience with firearms at all—this is far-transfer.
Okay, so you have to understand where your students are starting from and be able to design your instruction based on near or far-knowledge transfer. The only difference will be the amount of data and detail needed in the far-transfer vice the near-transfer instruction. The phase itself, still stays the same though. Give the baseline knowledge needed to get to part-task completion/practice.
The most important part that I have realized about this phase is that it needs to be “chunked” in order to allow plenty of “practice time” for your students. So technically we are going to run phase-1 and phase-2 concurrently and you are going to want to “chunk” your data to make this useful to your students. Before we get into that, let’s talk about phase-2.
Part-Task Training Phase
This phase is extremely important to make sure that those sub-layer skills that have been taught are practiced at some point for completion without being in a full-up scenario now. Hence the name, part-task, it truly is only part of the overall task that is being accomplished and/or practiced.
I’ll use the shooting example from the last section. For student one I want to make sure the student is intimately familiar with the differences in the safety features prior to putting live rounds down range, and before using the weapon in a scenario, under stress. So, I would have a class on the different safety features and we would teach how to “safely handle” the weapon. The sub-tasks to this would be clearing the weapon; loading the weapon; safeing the weapon after firing; holstering the weapon; drawing the weapon to fire; and firing the weapon.
Imagine that the class would go something like this:
Academic Set 1 – Safety Features of the Weapon
Part Task Set 1 – Demonstrate safety features of the weapon
Academic Set 2 – Clearing the Weapon prior to use
Part Task Set 2 – Demonstrate clearing the weapon prior to firing
Academic Set 3 – Loading the weapon
Part Task Set 3 – load the weapon…
You can see where this is going right? Phase I and Phase-II are running concurrently and we are handling the chunking of information for the student as well. The intent is to not break it down into way too many sub-tasks but to ensure that mastery of the sub-tasks is made before moving on to the next task. The reasoning is that we are going to do a “culmination exercise” prior to getting into our scenario phase of training.
So why are we doing this as part of PBL John? The easiest way to explain it is that if you want PBL to be successful, but you have never implemented it before, you have to phase it in or you will run into a lot of headaches with jumping straight into scenarios. Let’s take a doctor for instance, how long do you think they have spent in a classroom and a lab prior to working on a real patient? The answer is a lot… so think about that when you are looking at implementation. It doesn’t need to be a long phase-in at all. The fact is, you are not a medical school (unless you are, in which case, awesome that you are reading my blog!) so don’t plan a super long phase-in period for this.
Scenario Phase
This is the culmination phase of your training. This is where the student will get to apply every single part task piece into a live and/or simulated scenario that is applicable to their every day job or expectation of task performance. What does that mean? That means the scenarios in this phase actually matter. If you need the task to be performed flawlessly under stress. Then a stressful scenario has to be incorporated.
The total time that you have to run your program will dictate the length of time required for this phase. I will assist your planning by reminding you that a lot of your students’ learning is going to occur in this phase. For me, personally, I would allot about 60% of my overall course time to scenarios.
Scenarios are multi-phase in themselves though. It isn’t just a "throw the student into a scenario" multiple times and call it good. You are going to want to put your student through the scenario with the appropriate amount of preparation and then conduct a full debrief with them prior to their next scenario. Why? Well, you want to document your learners learning process and adjust future scenarios to their weak areas so they can become a master of their craft by conquering their weaker areas at the same time you are ensuring mastery of the overall task.
Back to the shooting task in the last two sections, what does a scenario look like? Well, if these are non-law enforcement, civilians who are in a conceal carry and/or self-defense class, I would have had extensive academics on the legalities of using your personal firearm when it is absolutely needed. I would realize that the moment my student actually needs to put these principles into practice, that they are going to be in the highest stress situations of their lives, life versus death actually, about as extreme as it can get right?
My scenarios for this would be “step-up scenarios” where the first few the student would encounter a problem that it doesn’t actually require them to use their weapon at all. They will have options to de-escalate the situation and “break contact” with the aggressor. This will help to hammer home the point that just because you have a gun on you, it is not necessary to use it all the time. When my student is mastering this through their debrief and in their actions, I will move them on to the next set of scenarios which would incorporate escalation to actual deadly force at some point. The intent of my scenarios would be to build out the entire tool-kit for this student so they have encountered multiple different, high-stress versions of a scenario where they had to make the right decision and act on it. Then they needed to prove their actions were correct in a debrief or explain how they are going to fix it next time.
Seems simple enough right? It will come along as you incorporate and build out more scenarios while learning from your students and their reactions, I promise. Remember, when your students get to this phase, they have been taught the fundamentals of everything they need to know to complete the scenario. Now they just are required to put it into action. When they can’t put it into action, THAT IS COMPLETELY OKAY! Failure isn’t only going to happen in this phase, it is encouraged so that we can all learn from it. Yeah, you, the teacher, will be learning right alongside your students with PBL. Every single person involved in a debrief is a student to some degree, don’t forget that.
Summary
PBL will assist your instructors and students with incorporating knowledge, skills, and traits (KSTs) into real-world applicable scenarios they could go immediately execute in real-life or in their next scenario. Your job as a curriculum developer, instructional designer, and line instructor is to ensure that your students are ready to execute the scenarios by providing them the knowledge and practice prior to scenario execution and real-world application. That isn’t taken lightly either and it shouldn’t be. In most of the situations where PBL has maximum applicability our students are required to make timely life or death decisions under the highest stress conditions. Your passion will shine through in your students’ actions. All you have to do is remember that the end-state in being an expert teacher is to make your students better than you ever were.
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