Finding relevant digital images to create presentation boards requires advanced search skills. This article describes a course assignment involving a technique designed to develop students' literacy skills with respect to locating images of desired quality and content from Internet databases. The assignment was applied in a collegiate apparel…

Problem-based learning (PBL) can provide an enhanced appreciation of the relationship between culture and food for students who aspire to become dietitians or nutrition educators; however, large university classes often inhibit the use of PBL. A professor who specializes in research documenting the relationships among food and culture took 17…

A common problem in learning mathematics concerns the gap between, on the one hand, doing the formalisms and calculations of abstract mathematics and, on the other hand, applying these in a specific contextualized setting for example the engineering world. The skills acquired through problem-based learning (PBL), in the special model used at…

Project-based science (PBS) instruction can simply be defined as a student-centered science teaching approach, in which students produce tangible learning outcomes by posing and answering research questions that are relevant to their own lives and communities. In a PBS classroom, students are encouraged to take responsibility for their own…

Merrill proposes First Principles of Instruction, including a problem- or task-centered strategy for designing instruction. However, when the tasks or problems are ill-defined or complex, task-centered instruction can be difficult to design. We describe an online task-centered training at a land-grant university designed to train employees to use…

Year 1 of the chemistry degree at the University of Leicester has been significantly changed by the integration of a problem based learning (PBL) component into the introductory inorganic/physical chemistry module, "Chemical Principles". Small groups of 5-6 students were given a series of problems with real world scenarios and were then…

Resource allocation decisions are a fundamental class of problems common throughout a business and therefore are found throughout business school curricula. Entrepreneurs must allocate capital, financiers must allocation cash, and production managers must create the best mix of multiple-use resources. Within this context, a business school's…

This discussion of problem-based learning (PBL) first describes well-structured and ill-structured problems and then offers a systematic process for finding potential PBL topics. The process involves constructing brainstorming maps to explore potential PBL units and then designing the student's role, the situation the student meets at the unit's…

Research on high school students using the Perry scheme (progressing from dualism to multiplicity, contextual relativism, and dialectic reasoning) suggests gifted students are at least one stage ahead of their agemates. While most students are grasping the notion of unanswered questions, gifted students are seeking structures to help them explain…

A curricular anchor is a complex problem that students acknowledge as worth solving and that validates learning a set of relevant skills and concepts. To motivate students, anchors must capture the imagination, be perceived as important by learners, legitimize the disciplinary content they integrate, and accommodate a variety of learning…

This paper argues that problem-based learning in higher education offers more constructive ways of thinking and acting in times of educational change. The same problem-based approach can illuminate some of the issues in current efforts at educational reform and assist in bringing about constructive change. (MSE)

Discusses four major issues related to the mathematics curriculum and what research says about each of them, namely questions of content, tracking, problem-based curricula, and the role of proof. (23 references) (MKR)

High school students in introductory accounting (n=64) took two combined problem-based and objective tests and a final objective exam. Combined format scores accounted for 62% of variance in achievement. Only the final objective-exam scores were unique predictors of achievement. (SK)

Uses a hypothetical ecology problem in which students need to apply problem based learning for a town government. Explains how to evaluate student results. (YDS)

Finnish eighth graders used computer control software to find creative solutions to technological problems. The learning environment encouraged problem-centered and creative approaches. More systematic teaching of programming skills before problem solving was recommended. (Contains 32 references.) (SK)