A guide to important variables in PBL.

Dear Dr. Alvares: My colleagues and I wish to bring to the attention of your readers “A Whole System Approach to Problem-Based Learning in Dental, Medical, and Veterinary Sciences: A Guide to Important Variables,” available at www.manchester.ac.uk/ceebl/ resources/resourcepacks/pblsystemapproach_v1.pdf. Its aim is to illustrate variables that affect the acceptability, effectiveness, or efficiency of a curriculum based on problem-based learning (PBL) principles. The term “problem-based learning” is sometimes used to claim educational excellence for quite different approaches to higher professional education. These approaches may not be applied primarily or consistently throughout an educational program. Also, most of the claims in the literature for or against PBL tend to concentrate on the acquisition of factual knowledge alone. Where the expectations focus on add-on generic or transferable abilities or skills, few if any details are offered to illustrate how students were assisted in the development of these competencies. Similarly, such reports tend not to describe other variables, as those relate to students’ and teachers’ familiarity with the implementation of PBL or the design of the curriculum, including the validity and reliability of how students are assessed. The guide offers thirteen variables in a coherent educational system, based on PBL principles. These extend from variables concerned with the expected educational outcomes of such a curriculum to what students can expect to be able to experience and practice; selection, induction, support of students, and academics; implementation and assessment; and monitoring and evaluation, as well as variables involved in the initial development and subsequent maintenance of an innovative curriculum for cumulative, integrated, contextual, collaborative, reflective, active learning. We hope that the guide may be of assistance to educators developing a new curriculum, revising an existing program, or researching the construct and implementation of a PBL-based educational system. We encourage suggestions for amendments in dental education; please send them to Professor David Powis at [email protected]. Charles Engel, Hon.M.D., Hon.D.Ed. Professor, Center for Higher Education Studies Institute of Education, University of London London WC1H OAL, UK [email protected]