Problem-Based Learning

Problem-based learning (PBL) has wide currency on many college and university campuses, including our own, the University of Delaware. Although we would like to be able to claim clear evidence for PBL in terms of student learning outcomes, based on our review of the literature, we cannot state that research strongly favors a PBL approach, at least not if the primary evidence is subject matter learning. There is some evidence of PBL effectiveness in medical school settings where it began, and there are numerous accounts of PBL implementation in various undergraduate contexts, replete with persuasively positive data from course evaluations (Duch, Groh, and Allen, 2001). However, evidence for learning outcomes is still needed. In this chapter, we review the origins of PBL, outline its characteristic methods, and suggest why we believe PBL has a persistent and growing infl uence among educators.